On naturalism and consciousness

[Neo-Scholastic]

Darn it! You guys are already 8 pages into my favorite topic.

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I don't believe consciousness can be explained by way of a naturalistic account. …

The first thing to note is that what you have is an argument from ignorance. "I can't imagine X, therefore not X." This is a minor point, so let's move on.

Let’s not. People that see an “argument from ignorance” typically accept that physical monism as the default position. I think the real question for these people is this: If all naturalism can offer is its own promissory note then why should it be preferred over any other theory? Sensible people take things as they appear to be until shown otherwise. Since dualism appears to be the case, why not accept it until the naturalists can actually produce a robust theory of consciousness.

Presuming that you're not a Chinese speaker, suppose I teach you the phonemes "qū xiàn." When you think about it, they're not "inherently" about anything. But they translate as curved. What makes these phonemes not inherently "about" curved objects before I teach you its meaning? Once you've been taught their meaning, do they then magically have a new property that the thought of them in your mind is now "inherently about" curved things?

You just exemplified the opposite of what you intended to show. To me "qū xiàn" is a set of signs, either sounds or marks, without not the significance. Thus the meaning, or significance, of the term is not found in the physical manifestation, or sign. In French the sign “chien” and the English sign “dog” have no physical characteristics in common, and yet they convey the same meaning. My point is that significance is not a physical feature or property, in keeping with the idea that physical things as physical things “just are” and do not have intentionality. The same applies to the relationship between the physical correlates of the brain, which are signs, and the mental properties, or the significance of the signs. Every human brain, beyond an overall rough structure, is at the functional level completely unique. The neural correlates of a specific idea will be more different from one person to another than the words “chien” and “dog” are different from each other. Based on this fact, anyone can see that the mind=brain concept is absurd since it does not allow from shared meaning from one brain to another.

…it must also explain how thought is inherently about things. Until you can do that, you're left with the rather unsatisfying "it just is”[/i]

That is an unfair demand. Subjectivity is experienced directly and without mediation. You know thoughts are about things because that’s how thoughts, and other qualitative experiences, are known.