What makes people irrational thinkers?

[polymath257]

No, I don't. I simply see it [nominalism and radical empiricism] as the simplest explanation consistent with the facts as we know them.

Simple explanations are indeed to be preferred when they explain all the relevant phenomena. No philosophical system is complete though there may be degrees of perfection. In your case, qualia and intentionality seem woefully unaccounted for.

Mostly because those are not fundamental questions, but questions of biology. We are still learning about how the brain functions, but there seems to be nothing inherently problematic about the brain being the substratum of the mind (which is a process, not a thing).

In a bit more detail, I have yet to find a coherent definition of what a 'quale' is. How does it differ from a perception? How can you be so convinced there is no physical explanation when we seem to be able to point to specific areas of the brain dealing with sight, sound, touch, etc?

As for intentionality, once again, we have a LOT of good information about which brain regions mediate it, how it can go wrong, etc.

Now, many people claim there can be no physical explanation of these, but I strongly disagree.

For example, supposed we get to a technological level (we are not there yet) where we can 'read minds' by looking at brain scans. Suppose that we can say that if a certain process in the brain occurs, the person will say they experienced the color red. Suppose we can do this with all experiences.

How is that *not* a physical explanation of qualia?

Perhaps this gets to the difference between 'physical' and 'mechanical'. There is no 'mechanical' explanation of light. But it has a very detailed *physical* explanation in terms of electromagnetic waves and photons. Like most physical phenomena, this amounts to a correlation between what we measure in certain ways and what we observe in other ways.

And in this way, we can have an explanation of consciousness: we can tell when a person is conscious, what they are experiencing, what their intentions are, etc.

I don't believe there *is* a hard problem of consciousness--only a soft one.

Mere consistency is very far from being enough.

So, in mathematics, there is the notion of formal proof....any proposed truth must be reducible to...axioms.

In the sciences, when there is a dispute, an experiment is proposed to resolve the dispute. Then actual observation determines who is wrong.

True consistency with observations is not enough. Degree of completeness is a important too. I see two independent systems: formalism and empiricism. What's their connection? You have not yet expressed any reason. What is common to formal systems that correspond with observations and those that do not? At some point you have to connect the phenomenal with the noumenal.  IMHO such that is not a satisfactory position.

Also, you and a few others seem very concerned about who is wrong.

Mathematics is a formal language. We can use it as we use other language to help us organize our ideas about the world. One advantage is that math is precise and thereby allows much more testability. 

The term 'nounenal' is ambiguous. Kant's version of the 'thing in itself' isn't problematic at all, I think: the 'thing in itself' is simply how it interacts. Physical things are defined in terms of their interactions.

If, instead, you mean something about 'mind' that is independent of physical things, I don't think there is such a thing. But, the brain processes information and one aspect of that information is a model of where it is and what it is doing; what it's goals are.

Consciousness is information and information supervenes on the physical.

I'm not so concerned about *who* is wrong. I simply want to avoid error.