(September 30, 2016 at 11:05 am)bennyboy Wrote: The difference is that continental drift and the unknown mechanism both share the same context-- earthly stuff, doing stuff. Mind/brain/materialism etc. is very much different than that. To draw a parallel, it would be like you have to ASSUME that there are fossils there, and THEN explain the mechanism for their presence. Nobody does that.
A point of contention between mind/body physicalists and their critics is how different mind actually is from matter. To use an example, some philosophers think intentionality is irreducible to physical components. But that's a controversial claim. My view is it's perfectly fine to explain intentionality within the framework of computational systems that can carry out operations that reference other operations.
Qualia is more difficult, but just because we have trouble connecting them to a neural explanation doesn't mean they're something completely different from neuroprocessing. The explanatory gap is presently neutral with respect to what kinds of explanations we could close it with.
A Gemma is forever.
