Barry has graciously posted a counter-rebuttal at UD to my Zombie Fred post rebutting his own original zombie post at UD. (This debate-at-a-distance procedure isn’t a bad way to proceed, actually! Although as always, he is welcome to come over here in person if he would like.)
Barry writes:
Over at TSZ Lizzie disagrees with me regarding my conclusions from the zombie thought experiment (see this post). Very briefly, in the zombie post I summarized David Gelernter’s argument from the zombie thought experiment:
If a conscious person and a zombie behave exactly alike, consciousness does not confer a survival advantage on the conscious person. It follows that consciousness is invisible to natural selection, which selects for only those traits that provide a survival advantage. And from this it follows that consciousness cannot be accounted for as the product of natural selection.
Lizzie disagrees. In her post she writes:
What is being startled if not being “conscious” of an alarming signal? What is trying to gain further information, if not a volitional act? What is recognising that information is lacking if not a metacognitive examination of the state of self-knowledge? What is anticipating another’s desires and needs, if not the ability to imagine “what it it is like” to be that person? What is wanting to please or help another person if not the capacity to recognise in another being, the kinds of needs (recharging? servicing?) that mandate your own actions? In other words, what is consciousness, if not these very capacities?
Let’s answer Lizzie’s question using her first example (the reasoning applies to all of her others). To be startled means to be agitated or disturbed suddenly. I can be startled by an unexpected loud noise and jump out of my seat. Zombie Fred would have the same reaction and jump right out of his chair too. Our physical outward actions were be identical. So what is the difference? Simply this. I as a conscious agent would have a subjective reaction to the experience of being startled. I would experience a quale – the surprise of being startled. Zombie Fred would not have a subjective reaction to the experience.
I submit that Barry has not addressed my questions at all. He has simply repeated his assertion – that physically identical entities (Fred and Zombie Fred) would differ in in some key way, namely one would experience a quale, and the other would not. And of course, I disagree. But let me unpack Barry’s assertion:
Let me first note that Barry refers to the “physical outward” actions of the two Freds. I suggest that “outward” is at best unnecessary, and at worst, misleading. In classic Philosophical Zombie thought experiments, the two Freds are physically identical, right down to the last ion channel in the last neuron.
This means that not only would Zombie Fred’s “outward” (i.e. apparent to someone meeting Zombie Fred at, say, a cocktail party) reactions be identical to Fred’s, but the cascade of biological events generating those reactions would also be identical. Not only that, but the results of those reactions – for example, changing the direction of gaze, reaching out to touch something, grasp something, change the trajectory of an action, move to a new location – will bring in new, behavourally relevant, information that ZF would otherwise not have gained. This itself will impact on the results of further decisions that ZF makes, and therefore on Zombie Fred’s biological equipment, in just the same way as it would on Fred’s biological equipment. In both cases, that equipment must enable both ZF and F to interrogate the state of their own knowledge, in order to base a decision on that knowledge. If it doesn’t in ZF’s case, ZF’s behaviour will differ from that of Fred’s.
And my question (or one of them) to Barry was: in what way does ZF’s interrogation of the state of ZF’s own knowledge differ from the meta-cognitive interrogation of our own state of knowledge that we call conscious awareness of our state of knowledge?
I will try to illustrate may point with the stupid red mouse mat illustrated at the top of this OP. My optical computer mouse reacts to a red mouse mat simply by stopping work (because it “can’t tell” whether it is moving when its red laser beam traverses a red surface). If I put it my mouse on a black mouse mat it starts work. But I do not argue that my mouse experiences red when it meets a red mouse-mat, even though though it reacts to it (by stopping work). So I do not think my mouse experiences a quale.
But I experience the quale of “red” when I see the mouse mat. Or, if you like, when I look at the picture of the red mouse mat at the top of the OP, I “experience redness”. So what do I mean by that?
I suggest that my experience of redness consists not merely of reacting to redness (my red receptors do this, but they are not me), as my mouse does (by stopping work), but also of knowing that the mouse-mat is red, and, moreoever, knowing that I know that the mouse-mat is red, and being able to compare that state of knowledge with the state of not knowing that the mousemat was red, as would be the case if, for instance I saw this picture:
which is a greyscale image of the same mousemat.
Aha, you say – but if I told you that the mousemat was red, you would have that knowledge – what you’d lack was the quale assocate with a red mousemat.
Yes, indeed, I agree. But I suggest that that knowledge (gained from you telling me that the mousemat is red) is qualitatively different from knowing it is read by seeing that it is red in the following ways:
- I know that my knowledge is contingent on my trust in your honesty, not my own perceptual apparatus
- I know that I would not know that the mouse mat was red unless you told me
- I know that if I saw a coloured red mousemat, as opposed to a greyscale image of the mouse-mat that I would know that it was red without you telling me.
- I also know that if I really saw a red mousemat, I would quite like it, because I know I like red.
- I also know that I would think it was a silly colour for a mouse mat, because the mouse probably won’t work on it, but maybe a red mouse could be cool.
And I suggest that all these pieces of knowledge are part of what constitutes my experience of directly seeing a red mousemat. Moreover:
- I also know that when I see red, and even, to some extent when I imagine red, and also to some extent, after you tell me the mousemat is red, I have an idea of what red is (or a red mouse mat would be) like, and that knowing what red is “like” is different from knowing that something is red.
And there’s the rub – what does that last thing mean? Because now we are close to this ineffable “qualia” business. And I suggest that the “quale” of red consists not only of all the explicit knowledge I listed first, it also includes implicit knowledge of what I feel like when we see red things, gained from partly from my life experience, but partly, I suspect, bequeathed to me by evolution in the genes that constructed my infant brain.
And in the case of red, specifically, I suggest it is a slight elevation of the sympathetic nervous system, resulting from both learned and hard-wired links between things that are red, and which have in common both danger and excitement – fire and blood being the most primary, edible fruit probably as a co-evolutionary outcome, and fire engines, warning lights, stop lights, etc as learned associations. And just as we can implicitly find ourselves feeling a touch of anxiety that we cannot pin down, triggered by a reminder of something we know we should have done, but can’t remember what, I suggest that the “qualia” of red, and indeed of other colours, is, in addition to our explicit knowledge-about-knowledge, also implicit knowledge about our own internal responses, including idiosyncratic appetitative or aversive responses.
And my point is: all the mechanisms that generate that explicit and implicit knowledge in response to a red stimulus would have to be present in Zombie Fred for Zombie Fred to react to red as Fred does. And, as a result, ZF would have just the same quale as Fred. And we could test this: if we use red stimulus in a priming experiment, does ZF show the same priming effects? Does ZF show the same increased reaction time to a red stimulus as to a green one as Fred does? Will ZF be more likely react to a fire alarm test following a series of red stimuli than following a series of green ones?
I suggest, in short, that a “quale” is a highly automated repertoire of possible action sets triggered by a certain stimulus property (classically colour), and that our knowledge that the mouse-mat is red when we see the full-colour picture boils down to the knowledge that it has activated in us a specific repertoire of action sets that we package together, for convenience, as “red”.
And that in order to behave exactly like Fred, those action sets must also be triggered in Zombie Fred by the same stimulus property. If they aren’t, he will behave differently. If they are, he will experience qualia, because that’s what qualia are.
Barry finishes his post:
I discussed a similar situation in this post in which I contrasted my experience of a beautiful sunset with that of a computer. I wrote:
Consider a computer to which someone has attached a camera and a spectrometer (an instrument that measures the properties of light). They point the camera at the western horizon and write a program that instructs the computer as follows: “when light conditions are X print out this statement: ‘Oh, what a beautiful sunset.’” Suppose I say “Oh, what a beautiful sunset” at the precise moment the computer is printing out the same statement according to the program. Have the computer and I had the same experience of the sunset? Obviously not. The computer has had no “experience” of the sunset at all. It has no concept of beauty. It cannot experience qualia. It is precisely this subjective experience of the sunset that cannot be accounted for on materialist principles.
I completely agree with Barry that the computer is not experiencing the sunset (just I assume that he agrees that my mouse is not experiencing a red mouse mat). But the computer is not behaving like Barry. There is a tiny overlap in behaviour – both are outputting an English sentence that conveys the semantic information that the sunset is beautiful. But to leap from “computer does not experience the sunset” to “this subjective experience of the sunset …cannot be accounted for on materialist principles” is a non-sequitur, because the computer does not behave like Barry. And if we replace the computer by Zombie Barry “Zombie Barry does not experience the sunset” is mere assertion – unlike the computer, Zombie Barry does behave exactly like Barry, not merely “outwardly” but with every molecule and ion of its being. So why should we conclude that Zombie Barry has no qualia?
I suggest that Zombie Barry both has, and must, because those qualia are a necessary consequence of ZB’s interrogation of its own internal state, and if it can’t do that, it won’t be able to behave exactly like Barry.
The term “brain states” is meaningless.
The term “organism states” is meaningless.
I take your point to be that switching from one meaningless pointless argument to another meaningless pointless argument doesn’t affect anything. I agree with that.
We might as well be counting mythical angels dancing on heads of mythical pins.
No KN, you cannot conceive a square circle. You can put that two words one after the other but that do not make the idea of a square circle.
Zombies are conceivable. Square circles are not because the first are not contradictions in terms; the second are.
For me, a full definition of brain states would involve the details of the interconnections between neurons, their firing rate, and other physically determinable factors (eg the neurochemical mix?).
I’d also say that simply detailing the current state this way is not enough as you have to also have some way to model the ongoing evolution of these states and how it is affected by the inputs from the body, including perceptions, internal body sensations, other brain states. Organism states would be an extension of this to at least all of the nerves of the body.
I agree that we don’t know enough neural science to provide a full operational definition of brain states or organism states, but I don’t think that makes the terms meaningless. Rather, I would say they are incompletely defined but with a viable research program in progress to try to define them completely.
I hope you don’t mind me putting in a couple of punctuation marks in your comment. It was very unclear without.
Not to speak for KN but I don’t think you can assume what anyone else is or is not capable of conceiving. Although on the narrow point of square circles I’d tend to agree with you that such a conception must be illogical. On the other hand, regarding philosophical zombies, I tend to agree with statements such as by Dennett:
One way that I think about it is to appeal to explanations in different sciences and how they relate.
By mental events, I meant what psychology talks about. By brain events, I mean what neuroscience talks about.
So this could be taking as an argument about reduction, and in particular ontological reduction. Are the explanations of psychology theoretically reducible to neuroscience (and eventually physics) even if that is not possible in practice and not useful in terms of explanatory power.
The zombie argument is used by property dualists to say that physical things also have non-physical properties which we would have to account for in such an ontological reduction.
ETA: It’s possible the above may rely too much on scientific realism for you as I understand from other comments that your outlook is closer to instrumentalism. If so, I think you could rephrase the last paragraph to say that property dualists claim that the zombie arguments show that neuroscientific explanations can never have the predictive effectiveness of psychological explanations unless non-physical properties were part of the neuroscientific explanation.
Show me your zombies and we’ll talk. Until then we are chatting about whether God can make a rock so heavy he can’t lift it.
If someone claims that such and such is a zombie, why should you believe it?
I don’t know about KN. But, as a mathematician, I have no difficulty conceiving of a unit circle. In fact, the unit circle in each of the Banach spaces
, 
, 
and 
is square.
But you can never have such details. And the brain is redesigning itself, so that such a definition soon would not fit. You cannot hope to build a theory of mind out of something so elusive.
I see Blas has shown up to defend the zombie argument, so I gladly relinquish the role. Your response to him makes sense to me too.
I doubt it. But then, I am not a reductionist.
Yes, I agree that the theory cannot be just about static states but also has to include theory for the process of change in those states.
I would also say that such a theory would be a theory of brain (or maybe total organism) not a theory of mind/mental events. See my other note on levels of scientific explanation for why.
I’m not sure how to understand your last sentence. Are you saying neuroscience is without hope? Or do you have a different understanding of what its approach is or should be.
BruceS,
Well, you had me fooled. Are you a lawyer by any chance? 🙂
I’ve just incurred a mild brain injury googling Banach spaces. Wikpedia didn’t even have a picture. I see some connection with Hilbert spaces so are we looking at non-Euclidian geometry as in space warped by large masses?
Neuroscience, as a study of the biology and chemistry of neural systems, is fine. But I don’t expect it to ever explain consciousness. That would need an entirely different strategy.
Yes, it is non-Euclidean, but not in the way that you are thinking.
It is a matter of defining distance. If we take ordinary two-dimensional space, and define the distance between
and 
to be 
, then circles (all points equidistant from a given point) will be square.
Thanks for taking the time to write such a detailed reply which I now need to study.
FWIW, I’ll offer my understanding of how Jesse Prinz would answer based on his book “Conscious Brain”, which I still studying. He is one of those philosophers who reference many neuroscientific experiments as evidence for his philosophy (although I am not able to judge the completeness or accuracy of his selected references). His view seems to have some commonality with what you are saying:
By intermediate level, he is referring to Marr’s three level model of vision (which he also argues applies to other senses). He recognizes that this model is now considered too simple, but provides arguments for why it is still a useful model in this context.
Consider for simplicity just the visual processing related to shape when looking at a cube. The lowest level includes processing of edges, faces, etc. The highest level includes reference to the representations of abstract properties of different shapes from different viewpoints (how a cube looks from any angle, a sphere, etc). The middle level is the one for the representation of a cube viewed from the current perspective, accounting for the distortions of the image on the retinue due to that perspective by integrating input from ther other two levels. The middle level is important because it provides the point of view associated with subjective experience.
It seems to me that this multi-level explanation overlaps with your reference to the all the related representations in your explanation of qualia.
He also claims that middle representations for qualia are particular patterns in the time evolution of the frequency of firing of certain groups of neurons and references some experiments as evidence.
However, he believes that just the intermediate representation is not enough for consciousness. He thinks that there must be an interaction between working memory and that representation for it to become conscious. Further, he equates working memory with attention. He uses masking experiments as well as an interpretation of certain brain injuries to justify the necessity of attention. From your previous replies, I think you may agree about the working memory part but perhaps not the role of attention. (I’m thinking of the driving example. Possibly, though, you may mean that we just don’t remember what we attended to in that example).
Retired IT middle manager. Although possibly a lawyer’s rhetorical skills are useful when justifying budget and schedule overruns.
I agree it may never happen, but the possibility I see as open is that neuroscience will explain consciousness in the same way that biochemistry explains life.
It is true that the subjectivity of consciousness does seem to make the two different for now.
I’m curious as what other non-dualist strategy there could be. Is it a topic you’ve addressed on your blog?
It is implicit in many posts at my blog, but you probably won’t be able to recognize that.
My approach has been to attempt to understand how our cognitive abilities could have evolved. This required looking for what could be considered selectable abilities.
That has led me to a very different way of looking at everything. So, to put it simply, I see philosophy of mind as mostly a 2000 year wild goose chase.
At the risk of getting repetitive, you should include sexual selection in the mix.
/Ancient Mariner mode
Oh, I absolutely agree that attention is relevant to working memory. In fact, one thing I find extraordinary in all most discussions of consciousness is that there is very little discussion of attention, and yet not only must (surely!) the two be intimately linked, if not actually the same thing (we actually define attention in terms of awareness of stuff), but we know a huge amount about the neuroscience of attention.
Just been browsing your blog. Very interesting! Can I add it to the blogroll here?
Your choice.
Your approach sounds interesting and well worth a dedicated blog post or two, if you are interested in spending the time doing it. I understand from other posts that you have elected not try to publish it formally.
I agree that philosophy of mind which is uninformed by the relevant science is likely to be useless for scientific research. On the other hand, the neuroscientist Christof Koch mentions in his “Confessions of a Romantic Reductionist” says that he and other neursoscientists find it useful to read papers by the philosopher Ned Block.
But neither of the above two points captures what I was trying to get at. There are neuroscientists who are studying consciousness by looking at neural correlates of consciousness when mental tasks are performed. There are others who propose and justify brain architectures underlying consciousness and other mental events by referring both to neuroscience and the results of psychology.
I think it is too soon to conclude these sorts of research programs are doomed to fail because consciousness can never be explained by neuroscience.
My own view is that research programs into “consciousness” are doomed to fail until someone actually defines what it is they want to know!
And obviously if you define consciousness, or qualia or whatever as something that cannot be observed objectively, then you can’t test whether it’s present or not.
But that seems a bit pointless. We can produce perfectly workable definitions of what consciousness involves, in terms of knowing, and attending, and deciding, and remembering, and recognising, and imagining, and all these are perfectly amenable to research.
I find discussions of consciousness tend to become a bit like the story of the child who was taken on her first trip to the zoo, and enjoyed seeing all the animals, but on the way home, asked “but where was the zoo?”
Or the joke about the theory that Shakespeare’s plays not being written by Shakespeare but by another man living at the same time with the same name.
It is not a matter of electing not to publish. What has become clear to me, is that most of people in the area see my ideas as obviously wrong. But they can never put their finger on where it is wrong. If they could point out where I am wrong, I would be most grateful.
The alternative is that they are not willing to make the effort to try to understand it. And that seems to be the real problem.
I understand the reason for this. Philosophy of mind has developed a list of questions that they want answered. And they can see that I am not addressing any of those questions. Instead, I am looking at what they have been taking for granted, perhaps without even realizing that they were taking it for granted. And I have been questioning that.
It seems that I have been attempting to do philosophy without metaphysics. And that, I suggest, is how it must be done if you want to investigate human cognition.
I thought from your brief description that is sounded more like evolutionary psychology than philosophy.
If zombies are not conceivable how we can comment this post? How Lizzie could write this post?
And you can explain how is that circle square in that space?
I gave a simpler example a couple of posts later. The simpler example works in the same way.
You mean that all the points that fullfill
(x2-x1)+ (y2-y1)=K Make a square? I do not see that. Unless it is not an ordinary two dimension space.
No matter of that you are changing the definition of distance, then the definition of circle can be everything.
I quoted Dennett as saying:
Dennett’s point is not that “zombies” can’t be imagined® but that philosophers’ imagination does not match their criteria.
ETA clarity
Take (x1,y1) to be a fixed point (maybe take it to be (0,0)). Then vary the second point. There is supposed to be an absolute-value symbol for each difference. You get a square.
To you, this looks like changing the definition of distance. But that is the definition of distance used in some of the Banach spaces that I mentioned.
The question was about our imagination. We ought to be able to imagine different ways of measuring distance.
Well if I have
(x2-x1)+ (y2-y1)=K
And I make (x1,y1)= (0,0)
(x2-0)+ (y2-0)=K
x2 + y2 = K
y2 = -x2 + K
That is a straight.
But changing that definition do not make the circle square but you are imagine a space where there is no circle or square.
Which criteria?
@ Blas
From Rationalwiki
None of this really makes any sense without a prior assumption of dualism.
ETA add link
And which is the problem to “immagine” dualism?
Blas,
I can imagine dualism. That is all anyone can do.
Please look up the meaning of “absolute value” in mathematics.
You actually get 4 straight line segments, which are the borders of a square.
The question under discussion was not making a circle square. It was about imagining a square circle.
Perhaps it is hard for your imagination. It is simple for a mathematician. In the case of the mentioned Banach spaces, they even call it “the unit circle” – the set of points of distance 1 from the origin, which turns out to be square.
Or it only makes sense if it justifies some kind of dualism.
For those who think that the p-zombie issue is not worthy of serious intellectual discussion, here is a 246 page 2013 PhD thesis on the topic. Of course, the fact that such a thesis exists may not change your mind on whether or not it is worthwhile to discuss p-zombies.
Inconceivable Minds
I’ve only read the abstract and table of contents.
I came across this from Dennett’s answer to the latest Edge question on what scientific idea is ready for retirement:
Dennett Says Hard Problem is Ready for Retirement
Dennett is near the bottom of the page.
Dennett
No doubt on first acquaintance the philosophers’ thought experiments succeed handsomely at pumping the intuitions that zombies are “conceivable” and hence “possible” and that this prospect, the (mere, logical) possibility of zombies, “shows” that there is a Hard Problem of consciousness untouched by any neuroscientific theories of how consciousness modulates behavioral control, introspective report, emotional responses, etc., etc. But if the scientists impressed by this “result” from philosophers were to take a good hard look at the critical literature in philosophy exploring the flaws in these thought experiments, they would—I hope—recoil in disbelief. (I am embarrassed by the mere thought of them wading through our literature on these topics.) You see, the arguments implicit in the simple, first-pass thought experiments don’t go through without some shoring up. We have to define not just conceivability, but ideal conceivability, and then ideal positive conceivability (as distinct from ideal negative conceivability, etc., etc.). Are perpetual motion machines imaginable but ideally inconceivable, or ideally positively conceivable? It makes a big difference, one is told, whether one can “modally imagine” a zombie. What can you modally imagine, and are you sure? And Frank Jackson’s intuition pump about Mary the color scientist prevented from seeing colors has to be embellished with imaginary gadgets that prevent her from dreaming in color, or perhaps she’s born color blind (but otherwise with an entirely normal brain!) or perhaps she’s fitted with locked-on goggles displaying black and white TV to her poor eyeballs. And that’s just a fraction of the complicated fantasies that have been earnestly proposed and rebutted. I am not recommending that scientists do this homework, but if they are curious to see what contortions philosophers will inflict upon themselves in order to “save” these retrograde intuitions, they could consult the superhumanly patient analysis and dismantling of the whole tangled mess in UNC’s Amber Ross in her 2013 PhD dissertation, “Inconceivable Minds.”
Pretty pithy!
I managed 50 pages or so of Amber Ross’ dissertation. Definitely anti-qualia. She(?) quotes Dennett with relish. Dennett was on the committee, I see.
It’s perfectly possible to imagine impossible things, and even to think they are possible (as most architecture students discover). That doesn’t mean they make sense, it just means we aren’t very good at seeing that they are impossible.
I usually find PhD theses too complicated for me, but you are right, this one seems clear and readable, even for the interested layman (although I am not sure I understand the full significance of the technical term “a posteriori physicalist”. I’ve only managed the first 40 pages or so, and it seems to read more like a literature review than a statement of original research, but I imagine that will change.
So far, I see her as in agreement that qualia in the very basic sense defined by Lycan (also an out-and-out realist according to wikipedia and also an adviser). But she is countering any argument that tries to draw a non-physicalist conclusion from that basic existence.
As I understand Dennett, , he thinks there is nothing that could satisfy the list of conditions that are used to define qualia according to all philosophers, although I am not sure if that list is common to many philosophers or if it is the union of different philosopher’s ideas. But and I have not studied him closely on this.
Definitely she:
Contemplating the Qualia of Birds
“Quailia”?
Vincent Torley has picked up onLizzie’s post at Uncommon Descent blog. If Mark Frank’s précis is accurate (I have the same problem as Mark. Torley writes well but volubly, I tended to pick up on the cognition stuff which seems quite relevant to some comments in this thread) it might bear a closer read and critique. We could have more violent agreement!
I agree that the summary would imply that V. Torley has used his intellectual powers for good, not evil, in this post. But I’ve only skimmed the article and I don’t think I’d agree fully with his reasoning.
1. On zombies and qualia, which is about whether we need property dualism. Here he says:
If you rely on law-like connections, then a philosopher could say that God had to make a separate decision in creating the universe to have those law like connections. But then physicalism is incomplete since mental events could be separate from physical. (Page 6 of the thesis). Of course, he may be quite happy with this conclusion..
2. On consciousness. Here his argument (like Dr Liddle’s, as far as I can see) ignores what I think is an important link in the argument: Physicalism tells us that brain states cause behavior. How can psychological states like consciousness cause anything since brain states provide a total causal explanation?
3. On intentionality (mental contents). This is the Plantinga EAAN and to address evolution and intentionality, I think you have to make some of the arguments discussed in the thread KN started some time ago.
I admit I have not read his post closely and it is possible I am misrepresenting it.
I always have a backlog on my to be read list, and I want to spend the time I have for this type of reading on things like the thesis or Prinz’s book. I think they will provide more informed arguments and that they will not have a a theological agenda.
I have the same problem, that the post is too long. I tried to read it all, but I skimmed over some parts and those might be important.
Mark Frank’s summary is approximately right. But there are some places where vjtorley was disagreeing with Lizzie. That was in the part that I skimmed over, so I don’t recall the details.
In any case, there’s quite a bit that I agree with in the post. However, it is also clear that vjtorley is a dualist, and that dualism (the traditional Christian view that there is a spiritual soul) is part of his analysis.
I disagree with that particular criticism.
Most people would say that an automobile works because of the combustion of the fuel, causing an expanding gas in the cylinder. But clearly, it works because of the motions of the atoms in the cylinder, so how could it be due to the combustion?
I hope you see what I did there. It’s a matter of the level at which we aim our account, so we can have different causal explanations at different levels.
Personally, I would not say that consciousness causes behavior, for about the same reasons that Lizzie argued against chance as a cause. That is, I see “consciousness” as too broad a concept to use for a cause. However, I also don’t want to put the brain down as a cause of behavior. I would rather describe in terms of the use of information about the world. So that sees the brain as an implementation detail, much like the motion of atoms is an implementation detail for the automobile.