(March 31, 2014 at 10:28 am)bennyboy Wrote: Let's start by looking at the main problem that a physical monism has: the problem of mind. Why does it exist? How does any amount or pattern of a physical structure like the brain result in something that goes beyond processing data and outputting behaviors, to actually experiencing what things ARE LIKE, including the self?
Why does it exist on physicalism? An accumulation via evolution given its survival-enhancing capability.
Does consciousness go beyond data processing and behavioral output? After all, there are physicalist accounts of mind and consciousness, such as put forward by Daniel Dennett, that argue that consciousness is actually an illusion.
Further, it's not that hard to argue against the existence of a 'self'. I could start with Hume's argument that even when during introspection (whatever that really is), I don't come across some singular, definite thing, but always some varying feeling or sensation.
Quote:Idealism has no such problem. If everything is mental, then the existence of ideas and experiences works fine as a brute fact.
Not sure that's true at all. On an idealist account of the mind, the idea that there are non-conscious mental processes because basically inexplicable, unlike under physicalism. After all, if all is mental and experience, then why should the creators of that mental experience have any proccesses they aren't aware of which direct their actions? While under physicalism, it's perfectly reasonable to expect unconscious processes to guide an agent's behaivors, given that we aren't consciously aware of those processes but we have discovered through science what parts of our brain are involved in regulating the proccesses.
Idealism has no way to account for this without being entirely ad hoc and just having more and more brute facts. The concept of the "unconscious" is just incompatible with idealism, because to not be conscious effectively means it does not exist. Yet I doubt you think you stop existing when you sleep.
Quote:What about science? Obviously, it represents a massive body of consistent observations and inferences that actually work, allowing us to do neat stuff like internet debates. HOWEVER, since all these inferences are made through the interface of experience, no underlying physical "reality" is actually necessary for science to work-- only an underlying reality which can produce experiences that are consistent. Whether you are looking at a real microscope or a dreamed microscope is irrelevant to the scientific process, so long as you are assured perfect consistency of observations. Science can therefore be accepted as a subset of an idealistic monism: some experiences are completely subjective and unshareable, and some are objective and shareable. The former can be called "spiritual," "personal" or just "subjective," and the latter can be called "physical" or "objective." But they need not be mutually exclusive, and we need not explain some bridge between the two, as they are not fundamentally different.
To even say there is an underlying reality involved in the success of science is to concede the very pount you're trying to dispute.
Quote:However, in a physical monism, we can't do this. We can't sensibly categorize the subjective ability to appreciate what things are LIKE as physical. You can't touch, feel, or measure what it's like for me to enjoy a chocolate bar. Yes, you could in theory monitor my entire brain state (maybe, some day, we hope and assume), but not only can you not get what it's like to be me enjoying the chocolate, you cannot even be sure that I AM enjoying it, rather than just seeming to. You cannot have access to my "what eating chocolate is like."
Same as my first response.
