(September 29, 2016 at 7:59 pm)ChadWooters Wrote: The theoretical models work until they don't. Newtonian physics is extraordinarily successful for ordinary scales. Nevertheless it doesn't tell the whole story at extremely small and extremely large scales. Nearly all the materialist/physicalist theories of mind are based on 18th century physics and they haven't delivered. That approach has been a dismal failure for well over 100 years and yet the various proponents of materialist/physicalist monism continue to issue the promissory note that a solution will be forth-coming...someday, maybe. I would note that idealistic monism suffers from a similar problem in reverse.
Two cases where were in a similar position. Alfred Wegener had evidence that continental drift had happened, but he didn't have a mechanism to explain it. Darwin had evidence for evolution, but the mechanisms driving it wouldn't be apparent until the discovery of genetics. Those promissory notes turned out good. It's fine to have evidence for something without a robust explanation of mechanism.
Right now the options are that we could explain consciousness within the framework of the standard model of physics (invoking metaphysics, perhaps, like neutral monism), or we could explain with new physics. The latter would of course be a sweeping, breathtaking change for the mind/body physicalist position, but it would still be physicalism.
A Gemma is forever.
