Christianity is heading for a full allegorization

[emjay]

The worst that could be said about property dualism, I think, is that it's an arbitrary designation with no explanatory value.  Sure, there are material properties and mental properties.  Also material properties and wind properties.  Material properties and burger properties.  Material properties and tuesday properties.   Material properties and cultural properties.  etc.

Ultimately, it allows us to posit that it's not a difference of substance, but a difference of effect or subject - but we already knew that, didn't we, we want to know how the substance produces the effects, no matter how many categories of genuinely distinguishable effects there are.  The idea that one substance can produce many disparate effects is true, but trivially so.

This is the first time I'm actually starting to understand this argument you've made all along (hopefully ;-)). But if I am understanding it correctly, I think I have responded to it already, in a sense, in my thoughts given so far on this subject. I think it's fair to say I'm also a property dualist, but as Grandizer mentioned earlier, of a different flavour to him, Epiphenomenalism. In fact I think I'm probably the only one in the room with that position, lonely as it is ;-).

Anyway, what I mean by saying I thinking I've responded to this criticism already, is that though I recognise the hard problem, I think it's something that science can't address if viewed from the Epiphenomenalist POV, and doesn't address if viewed from the physicalist position (as I understand it) as described by you and polymath, that sees it as incoherent on account of the stated goals of physics; that consistent, universal, reliable etc correlation *is* causation from a physics point of view, with nothing further to explain, something I didn't know until polymath brought it up here, and also the observation, as you're also alluding to here I think, that physicalism is non-discriminating in its approach to causally 'correlatable' properties, that there is no difference from that point of view between 'internal' (ie subjective experience) and external properties (as opposed to the contention of property dualism that the internal and the external are categorically different in some sense and not reducible in this way)... again something I hadn't really seen explicitly stated by the physicalist position until polymath in this thread. My point being that either way, I see the hard problem as something that won't be addressed by science, either because it can't, under an Epiphenomenalist POV, or is incoherent under a physicalist POV... so either way leaving it as a question for philosophical speculation only, and thus likely unresolvable in any univerally accepted or definitive sense, and thus nothing to pin all our hopes for progress on, putting all our eggs in that basket so to speak.

That leads on to another way my position differs from Grandizer's, and presumably Belacqua's; in my characterisation of the value of scientific... ie physicalist... study into the brain and consciousness... the study of the neural correlates of consciousness. In this respect my Epiphenomenalist perspective is much more similar to yours or polymath's perspective than Grandizer's or Belacqua's, in that under Epiphenomenalism since there is a one-way causal relation between the physical properties (ie the neural correlates of consciousness) and the mental properties (ie phenomenal consciousness), then to map the one that we can map with science, means indirectly to map the other. It doesn't address the 'how' it arises, which I accept as already stated, but it does address, fully, the 'what' of what arises... and the value of that I'd say is most evident say in an example I saw on youtube of the look of absolute and pure joy on a woman's face who had suffered from chronic pain for a long time, and allowed neuroscientists to use an experimental treatment on her, stimulating a certain part of her brain... going into it I remember she looked hopeful but non-expectant, I think the look of someone who'd probably tried many treatments before without success, but as soon as the electrical stimulation took effect, the look of absolute joy and gratitude that spread across her face was incredibly moving. I'm afraid I don't remember what video it was but the point is that without the study of the neural correlates of consciousness, and in this case, the neural correlates of pain, that wouldn't have been possible.

Now I'm certainly not saying that I think Grandizer and Belacqua don't see the value of neuroscience in its own right, but just don't see it as a satisfactory explanation of consciousness itself... which is where we part ways; I think it is at the very least part of the full explanation of consciousness - a full catalogue or mental and physical events, fully mapped with one to one correspondence, would be a massive part - and at the most, the full explanation (if accepting the physicalist POV), but either way, as either Epiphenomenalist or physicalist, I think it's the only part that can be addressed with science, and as such we should do so to the utmost of our ability, and not allow getting bogged down in the hard problem, if one is accepted, to get in the way, since that looks to be an unresolvable philosophical problem whatever perspective you have (unresolvable in the sense of an agreed upon consensus, as is the case with most of philosophy).

As for the question of Epiphenomenalist or physicalist, that's not actually as huge a conceptual leap from one to the other for me as it would appear... and I've actually been playing with the idea in my head for a bit, and to look at the world from that physicalist POV, if only for a while, has been surprisingly mentally freeing/insightful in a lot of deeply personal/philosophical ways. Doesn't mean I can accept it, but it is certainly food for thought and opens up new perspectives for me, and at least as described in this thread by you and polymath, does not appear evasive in the main sense that would put me off such an idea, ie it explicitly accepts 'internal' subjective experience as a property, rather than outright ignoring it or trying to redefine it out of existence... though I think Grandizer and Belacqua might disagree with my accessment there; but that's how I take it - I've had much more frustrating discussions with physicalists, than here in this thread, on account of that - this feels like a breath of fresh air. A much bigger conceptual leap for me would be that from Epiphenomenalism, to, well, anything else. Especially how it relates to physical determinism. Which is perhaps not an issue for physicalism - because in that sense there does not seem to be much practical difference between Epiphenomenalism and physicalism in the way that matter, which is governed deterministically by physics in both views, directly or indirectly corresponds, on a direct one-to-one mapping basis between neural correlates and phenomena; either as in some Epiphenomenal sense caused by as some sort of emergent property, or in some physicalist sense inextricable from/absolutely identical the underlying physical states. But outside of physicalism, I don't have much conception of what a non-Epiphenomenalist POV entails... if the mental side for instance is deemed to be subject to any form of determinism, or somehow causally independent from all that, despite their being an admitted shared connection of substance. For instance I don't believe we have free will, I believe phenomenally we have the illusion of it (and that is a separate illusion from one that would deny consciousness itself exists - an illusion within consciousness), but that ultimately everything is governed by the underlying deterministic physics. So if the non-Epiphenomenalist view aims to argue that sort of free will into existence, it would be a much harder sell and much bigger conceptual leap for me.

Anyway, rambling aside, back to the original question... does it look like I've understood what you were meaning in your post, and did this address that criticism?