🚀 go-pugleaf

Don't blame me, I voted for chalmers@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu (David Chalmers).
>Obviously, if you include the truth of physicalism is a *premise*,
>you can get your conclusion.  However, physicalism is precisely
>what's in question.

No, Mr. Chalmers, that is not what is in question.  What I've been
trying to establish is that your "probably correct" syllogistic
proof of dualism is circular, because it requires the prior
assumption that dualism is true.  The fact that I personally
believe physicalism to be true is irrelevant to the discussion;
I'm well aware that my belief is unprovable.

To recapitulate the entire discussion:  You presented an argument
for dualism which you said was "probably correct", and its first
premise was that a nonconscious exact duplicate of your body could
be constructed.  I pointed out that such a duplicate could only
be nonconscious if physicalism is false--which means that you had
been silently assuming dualism to be true before you started.

>I asked for a reason to believe that the
>facts about consciousness are logically necessitated by the
>physical facts, *independent* of that assumption.  On the face
>of it, the notion of a zombie replica of me certainly seems to
>a logical possibility.  Why isn't it?

Perhaps you're using one of those slippery definitions of "possibility"
that we were discussing the other day.  If you mean something by
"logical possibility" that I don't, then this whole discussion's
been pointless.  The way I see it, a zombie replica is only possible
if dualism is true, and impossible if physicalism is; in either case
you can't prove anything about the world by asserting one or the
other.

-- 
"This coffee is my blood, this breakfast burrito is my flesh.  And
 it cost me 89 cents, so get your goddamned own." - Jeff Lester, "Saint 11"