On naturalism and consciousness

[Mudhammam]

First of all, is the bolded word meant to be "causally," or as you've quoted it?

I agree with Mackie's view on the problem of dualism, but I cannot understand why he "admits a material world at all." I assume in the text you quoted, he addressed why he isn't willing to consider an idealistic reality as a contender.

Question for you: you seem to be gravitating toward property dualism as well. If so, do you mean that mind may supervene on the brain, as a physical property, or that the nature of matter is intrinsically dual in nature, i.e. the universe is made of a kind of psychophysical stuff?

Whoops. Yeah, I meant to type "causally."

Mackie has an entire chapter (all this is from the Miracle of Theism, a great read thus far I might add) devoted to Berkelely titled "Berkeley's God and Immaterial Realism," and one of the points he quotes from Samuel Johnson, a correspondent and critic of Berkeley's, is that "it is... still something shocking to many to think that there should be nothing but a mere show in the all art and contrivance appearing in the structure (for instance) of a human body, particularly the organs of sense. The curious structure of the eye, what can it be more than merely a fine show, if there be no connection more than you admit of, between that and vision?" I think this a point immaterial realism has difficulty addressing, for even if we invoke a divine mind, the features of the world seem alien to the intentional objects of such a mind whereas if we take the world as objectively material, the details and complexity are natural enough. Mackie also writes that "it has been found possible, particularly with the growth of science over the last 400 years, to give further explanations of the behavior of the supposed physical objects in this three-dimensional world, particularly by postulating that they have micro-structures and various further features which are never directly perceived by our senses. And... the processes leading to sensory perceptions themselves have been traced, and the sensations therefore partly explained, by the identification of sense-organs and nerves leading from them to the brain--most notably the parts of the eye, the formation of images on the retina, and the connection between it and the optic nerve." I would also add two further points: if experience was strictly immaterial, it would seem to me to that thoughts would not be so dependent on the objects that we perceive to exist externally to us, but rather have more original content that has no correlation to the "outside" world. There also seems to be a regularity in the operation of these so-called external objects that abstract thoughts don't seem to follow; that is, our train of thoughts are often incoherent, jumping to and fro from subject to subject, lacking a direction and structure that the "external" world possesses. So what would explain this difference from an immaterial point of view?

I like the idea of property dualism but until I feel I have a better grip on all the issues involved and different approaches at solving them, I'm content with the position of agnosticism, but leaning towards the computational theory of mind (as far as I understand, that can be held in consistence with property dualism as well?).