🚀 go-pugleaf

Mike V <bb07974@binghamton.edu> wrote:

>In fact, our efforts to reduictively explain consciousness in terms of the
>physical properties of our universe have been so fruitless that we might
>begin to suspect that consciousness might not be part of the physical
>world.  This is precisely the move Chalmers makes in his recent book "The
>Conscious Mind."  He argues for what he calls "naturalistic dualism,"

We can't assume that something isn't part of the physical world just 
because current physics can't explain it. From what I understand, physics 
can't explain the behaviour of water flowing from the tap. We just assume 
that it is explainable in terms of the physical world but that it's too 
complex to be accounted for by a simple theory. The same explanation 
should be assumed for our inability to explain consciousness.

The issue of reducing one science to the terms of another is a live one in 
linguistic philosophy. Many philosophers dismiss linguistic theory because 
it deals with abstractions like "sentence" and "phrase" which can't be 
reduced to neurological terms. Defenders of linguistics like Fodor (The 
Language of Thought) and Chomsky (Language and Thought) argue against the 
necessity for reducibility as a criterion for a scientific theory, citing, 
for example, the ludicrousness of expecting nineteenth century chemistry 
to be reducible to physics. Chomsky in particular argues that the point of 
comparing sciences is to unify them, not reduce them, and claims that the 
only recent example of successful reduction has been of biology to 
biochemistry. Linguistics, he and Fodor argue, is surely reducible to 
neurology - it's just not clear how.
 
Accepting these arguments, there is no requirement that consciousness 
needs to be shown to be reducible to physics - we should assume that 
consciousness is a mental phenomenon that there is just no explanation for 
at this time.

>which basically treats consciousness as outside the domain of the
>physical and essentially epiphenomenal in nature.  That is, consciousness
>does not influence our behavior -- it is explanatorily irrelevant to the
>things we say, and possibly casually irrelevant to the things we do.

If that was true, we would not be able to introspect and change our 
behaviour based on our view of ourselves. Wouldn't it follow that there is 
no need for psychologists, psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, etc.?

Uri