Mindfulness or Mindlessness?

[vulcanlogician]

^It was a good read. And yes, a little technical in places, but nothing we can't unpack and clarify. It's not overly technical.

@Neo-Scholastic

So let's discuss this. One point I thought was salient was Lycan's defense of the interaction problem, namely that we don't fully understand causality-- period. And that comes to bear when considering how minds causally interact with bodies. That's an excellent point. And I think he's correct here.

One objection that I came up with (not featured in the paper) concerns Lycan's suggestion that the Cartesian abandon nonspaciality.

Why not suppose that minds are located where it feels as if they are located, in the head behind the eyes?... If it be protested that our heads are already entirely full of physical stuff and that two things cannot occupy the same region of space at the same time: ... Immaterial minds are not physical. And what is true is only that two physical things cannot occupy the same region of space at the same time. For that matter, ... our heads are not entirely full of physical stuff. Physically, they are mostly empty space, with minuscule particles zipping through them at very high speeds.

But let's think about what Lycan is saying here: there is some kind of immaterial, airy-fairy stuff hovering around our heads. There is a reason we think ordinary objects (like tables) are located in space. We see them. We look at them and perceive them occupying space. Therefore we are justified in believing that ordinary objects, like tables, occupy space. What is Lycan's justification? There is none. His postulation is simply a way to make the argument easier for him.

Of course, it may be true that there is some kind of airy-fairy mind floating about in our headspace. But the dualist has all his work ahead of him to prove this. We needn't spend any time wondering if tables occupy space. That's a safe assumption. There is a reason Descartes postulated that the mind lacks extension. We can directly observe our minds (in fact, that's all we can observe... we only observe physical objects as contents of our minds). But when we observe the mind itself, and not specifically its contents, we see no extension of it in space. We don't "see" it floating around our headspace.

Are you interested in breaking down the syllogism Neo, or @DLJ ?

I didn't give it careful study, but if I do, I wonder if I'll share Lycan's conclusion that both premises are false. And (even if they are false) I wonder if the materialist can't construct a less ambitious argument with true premises.