(January 28, 2016 at 12:52 pm)LadyForCamus Wrote:I intend to be clear, not annoying (this time).(January 28, 2016 at 12:40 pm)ChadWooters Wrote: Not exactly. Mary was deprived of the physical data set necessary to experience color. The thought experiment focuses on whether any kind of monist reduction is possible. It takes no particular stand with respect to supervenience.K...would you mind rephrasing your above thoughts in a manner ...more easily understand[able]? Your esoteric language is very annoying...
Jackson’s thought problem tacitly appeals to Leibnitz’s law, “The Identity of Indiscernables.” Basically, if someone can say something about one thing that cannot be said about the other, then those two things are not identical. Everything true of Clemens is also true of Twain, hence they are identical. If brain and mind are identical then every true statement about the physical system of the brain is true about the mental experiences and vice versa. (Brain is a Clemens. Mind is a Twain.)
A physical reduction would mean that a complete description of something’s material composition and observable changes would exhaust all possible knowledge about that thing. Jackson’s initial claim was that conscious experiences are not identical to physical facts because a complete knowledge of the physical facts associated with consciousness does not include knowledge of what it is like to experience consciousness. To me, it shows that mental properties are not identical to brain states. This not to say that mental properties and physical brain states can exist independently, only that the existence of each should be considered distinct.
On the other hand, supervenience is a one-way causal relationship in which the existence of particular mental properties depends necessarily on specific physical processes, but not the other way around. It’s a separate, although related, issue.
