RE: Consciousness Trilemma
May 29, 2017 at 9:36 am
(This post was last modified: May 29, 2017 at 9:59 am by bennyboy.)
(May 29, 2017 at 8:21 am)Hammy Wrote:(May 23, 2017 at 6:25 pm)Neo-Scholastic Wrote: 1) Conscious experience is not an illusion.
2) Conscious experience has an essentially subjective character that purely physical processes do not share.
3) The only acceptable explanation of conscious experience is in terms of physical properties alone.
1) is true but I not only consider 2) false but I also consider 3) false if what it means is that the mental reduces to the physical or can be explained by the physical. 3) can be correct if it also includes the option that the mental itself is itself wholly physical as opposed to merely being explained by or reduced to the physical.
What does "physical" mean if it refers also to subjective experience? It seems to me that it ceases to be a word that distinguishes between anything and anything else, except perhaps for "spirit," but nobody is talking about that anyway.
What are the physical laws of mind? What, if mind is physical, are the means by which one may interact or measure it, without resorting to philosophical assumptions that lead one to beg the question?
Either material is intrinsically mindful, or there is some particular property or function of material systems which allows mind to exist. In the former case, panpsychism is true, and I'd describe that as an Idealistic reality. If the latter is true, then how, even hypothetically, would we go about doing science with minds-- or even determining which systems are/aren't mindful?
Here are the assumptions required to move forward given what you've just said: 1) solipsism is not false-- something which can only be assumed, and not proven; 2) there is an objective material reality, more than which cannot be said to exist-- again, which is unprovable, and not even necessary to explain the Universe or the events unfolding within it; 3) in humans, neural correlates of mind must be taken AS mind rather than something causing it or holding some other relationship to it-- but this begs the question, since a science of mind should ESTABLISH whether this is indeed the relationship between subjective experience and objective function.
In short, I'd like to suggest that your view on consciousness isn't actually a theory of mind-- rather, it is an expression of that collection of assumptions that make up your world view: "IF everything I've already decided to believe about reality is true, then definition X of mind is likely correct."