(March 27, 2014 at 9:55 am)Pickup_shonuff Wrote: Chalmers himself takes the position of "naturalistic dualism," arguing in this book (The Conscious Mind) that "the cornerstone of a theory of consciousness will be a set of psychophysical laws governing the relationship between consciousness and physical systems." Furthermore he says (to my relief), "There need be nothing especially supernatural about these laws. They are part of the basic furniture of nature, just as the laws of physics are. There will be something "brute" about them, it is true. At some level, the laws will have to be taken as true and not further explained. But the same holds in physics: the ultimate laws of nature will always at some point seem arbitrary. It is this that makes them laws of nature rather than laws of logic." (bold mine)
"Naturalistic dualism" is either a poorly chosen term for a reasonable idea, a name for an incoherent idea, or a contradiction.
And "psychophysical"? That leads me to believe he really means dualism, and he's riding the woo-woo train.
Skepticism is not a position; it is an approach to claims.
Science is not a subject, but a method.
Science is not a subject, but a method.
