Abstract

In this paper I scrutinize the so-called China Brain thought experiment famously articulated by Ned Block to see whether it refutes functionalism as a theory of consciousness. I argue that it does not. Block’s case rests on a single premise, P, in the following argument: a creature with a China Brain would lack qualitative experience, despite its being a functional replica of you or me, and working under the assumption that we have rich mental life complete with qualia. Yet if a China Brain-creature were truly and completely R, and yet P were true as the thought experiment purports to show, functionalism would have to be false. Since I want to reject that conclusion, I must do one of the following: deny that Mr. Li is truly R in the first place; grant that Mr. Li is truly R and grant that P, but deny that we have M; or grant that Mr. Li is truly R and grant that we have M, but deny that P. I opt for the third option. First, I paint a picture according to which Mr. Li's having M would not seem as implausible as it does at first. That is, I try to make the premise P seem less intuitive. But in case I am unpersuasive in this first approach, I employ a second tactic as well. This one is to suggest that we cannot know, even in principle whether P, so it is an irrelevant intuition upon which to base the China Brain attack. In any case, the China Brain fails to provide a true counterexample to functionalism.