Rosenberg's Argument Against Beliefs

[Whateverist]

If not just electro-chemical processes then what is the extra ingredient?

The extra ingredient isn't present as an input, only as an output. Sometimes, with emergent phenomena, 1 + 1 > 2. The only thing in the pot is grey matter, chemicals and electrical activity. But that gives rise to all the subjective phenomena we think of as putting the "my" into the sense of self we all exhibit. I guess you think that can only be explained by an extra causal input from God-only-knows where, but that is just an assumption as is the idea that the whole can never exceed the sum of the parts.

The naturalist assumption is that the physical universe is causally closed.

But you are quicker than I to claim to know the extent of the causes emanating from the natural world. My definition of natural extends not only to what is known to exist but to what can be discovered to exist. Even if the physical universe is closed, it isn't completely known.

---

We do not suppose that ink and paper, thermostats, and computers have minds?

Soon computers might.

There is a good possibility that computers will advance to a level where what they do will be impossible to distinguish from a "mind".
At that point you could say that they have a mind.

Well .. no, never mind.