🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <BuHEHG.9Cu@usenet.ucs.indiana.edu> chalmers@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu (David Chalmers) writes:
>In article <3awngqj.kmc@netcom.com> kmc@netcom.com (Kevin McCarty) writes:
>
>>It seems to me that the question of whether the mental aspect of
>>reality is a causally invisible epiphenomenon has not been settled.
>>Am I wrong?  This may explain the startled reaction to the claim that
>>the physical world is causally closed.  We may have no evidence to
>>doubt that it is, but that's not justification for saying there
>>couldn't be.
>
>Well, many aspects of mentality are almost certainly causally
>efficacious: things like learning, memory, belief, desire, and
>so on.  That sort of thing seems to logically supervene on the
>physical facts -- e.g. if I'm learning, it's logically necessary
>that my physical replica (if embedded in an identical physical
>environment) is learning, and so on.  That's because mental
>concepts like learning, belief, and so on, seem to be characterized
>by their causal role in the production of behaviour.

And these characteristics comprise the entire mind!

>
>The problem of epiphenomenalism only really arises in a strong
>form for the phenomenal aspects of mind, i.e. conscious experiences,
>or "qualia" as philosophers call them.  These aren't characterized
>functionally, and don't seem to logically supervene on the physical.

I think they do.  I think that bare subjective experience is quite
reasonably understood as identical with the existence of the relevant
parts of the brain.  Give an argument against this position.

>But these have to be kept quite separate from the "psychological"
>aspects of mind, like learning and belief, which seem to be
>causally efficacious in a relatively straightforward way.  Hence,
>it's not really a problem for physicalism if economics invokes the
>beliefs and intentions of cognitive agents.
>
>-- 
>Dave Chalmers                            (dave@cogsci.indiana.edu)      
>Center for Research on Concepts and Cognition, Indiana University.
>"It is not the least charm of a theory that it is refutable."


-- 
The opinions expressed		|     --Sincerely,
above are not the "official"	|     M. Randall Holmes
opinions of any person		|     Math. Dept., Boise State Univ.
or institution.			|     holmes@opal.idbsu.edu