RE: Why materialists are predominantly materialists
September 21, 2016 at 3:41 pm
(This post was last modified: September 21, 2016 at 3:45 pm by Neo-Scholastic.)
(September 21, 2016 at 1:55 pm)Jörmungandr Wrote:(September 21, 2016 at 10:14 am)ChadWooters Wrote: I think Jor is saying that they don't actually become conscious agents.They think they think but they don't. They don't actually feel the feelings they feel. She turns Chalmers's thought problem on its head by saying that ours already is the zombie world.
That would be largely correct, though I might disagree with some of the wording. People want to give consciousness this ontological status as 'a thing' that is more than just stuff happening in the brain.
Oddly enough I do not take issue with much of what you said since the term "consciousness" tends to cover a broad range of concepts. Your critique seems focuses on the notion of a unitary conscious agent, as opposed to say the contents of consciousness and deals with "consciousness" as a verb. One the one hand I am inclined to agree that the "Cartesian Theater" can be deconstructed into discrete parts. On the other hand, I question whether doing so ignores the essential, as expressed poetically:
Have you ever considered
After taking the person apart
That the broken pieces
Like spring-driven toys - in isolation tagged
Do
As they would do
In the company of their peers?
By focusing exclusively on the causal (efficient) relationships in material substances, I think eliminative materialists (which I consider you to be) avoid dealing with the ontological status of the contents of consciousness. By analogy, they think language is only about grammar and spelling and that the meaning of words and the intent of sentences are superfluous.