101 upvotes, 9 direct replies (showing 9)
I think that eliminativism is widely strawmanned. These philosophers are flesh and blood (and quite likeable and excellent writers, at least in the case of Dennet), of course they have the same conscious experience as you or I, I do not believe this is really in question. Kastrup wants to use this apparent contradiction to claim "CHECKMATE ELIMINATIVISTS", but this seems like a really uncharitable line of argument, as if these great thinkers somehow forget they are conscious.
My reading of eliminavism is as a sort of occams razor applied to metaphysics. There is no need for complicated metaphysical machinery beyond physicalism to explain what is around us, so to reject consciousness as an "illusion" is to reject the tempting desire to assign consciousness an extra-material characteristic.
However, physical brains embodied as people still go around talking about "what it is like to be them", and from a naive behavioralist perspective we have no good explanation for that. But again that is not because we have yet to discover some hidden essence of the soul, but because we lack deep enough cognitive/neuro/computer-scientific grounded explanation, at present.
Comment by [deleted] at 16/01/2020 at 23:17 UTC
10 upvotes, 1 direct replies
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Comment by ManticJuice at 16/01/2020 at 21:41 UTC
19 upvotes, 3 direct replies
There is no need for complicated metaphysical machinery beyond physicalism to explain what is around us, so to reject consciousness as an "illusion" is to reject the tempting desire to assign consciousness an extra-material characteristic.
Eliminativism and illusionism are two distinct positions. The first wholly denies consciousness, the latter simply states that what we think is consciousness is illusory, and really something else. So characterising eliminativism as denying consciousness isn't really as strawman, it's the core of their argument.
that is not because we have yet to discover some hidden essence of the soul, but because we lack deep enough cognitive/neuro/computer-scientific grounded explanation, at present.
How could any degree of understanding of objective physical processes explain subjective mental experience? Reasoning from physical-physical emergence to physical-mental emergence (and thus claim that we simply don't have sufficient data yet) is a category error; we cannot simply reason our way by analogy from objective physical things giving rise to objective physical emergent properties to objective physical things giving rise to subjective mental emergent properties - there is something different going on here which requires explanation, if the materialist wants to claim emergence as the source of consciousness. Mental does not here mean "non-physical", but rather subjective and qualitative, as opposed to objective and quantitative; I'm not asserting a non-physical, immaterial mind, simply a wholly different *kind* of phenomena which is not explained by hand-waving emergence.
Comment by spinn80 at 17/01/2020 at 06:16 UTC
4 upvotes, 1 direct replies
I think that eliminativism is widely strawmanned.
While I strongly disagree with Daniel Dennett and Sean Carroll on their views on consciousness, I agree with you that their arguments are strawmanned (at least in this article)
They are incredibly intelligent people with incredibly strong arguments.
My reading of eliminavism is as a sort of occams razor applied to metaphysics. There is no need for complicated metaphysical machinery beyond physicalism to explain what is around us, so to reject consciousness as an "illusion" is to reject the tempting desire to assign consciousness an extra-material characteristic.
Well, we don’t know that do we? We haven’t actually explained consciousness at all so far so we still don’t know if we need metaphysical explanations or not. If we had a material explanation for consciousness, than I’d agree there was no need to conjecture extra stuff to explain it.
Also, you can’t say consciousness is an illusion because you need consciousness to experience illusions to begin with, so that’s just a circular argument (in my view)
However, physical brains embodied as people still go around talking about "what it is like to be them", and from a naive behavioralist perspective we have no good explanation for that. But again that is not because we have yet to discover some hidden essence of the soul, but because we lack deep enough cognitive/neuro/computer-scientific grounded explanation, at present.
Again, you don’t know why we don’t have a good explanation. Might be because of what you say, might be because indeed its metaphysical. Time will tell.
BTW: I created a new sub r/AtomicReasoning where I plan to discuss these issues in a ruled manner... please check it out! It’s just starting.
Comment by YARNIA at 16/01/2020 at 21:26 UTC
5 upvotes, 0 direct replies
There are variations of eliminativism. At some turns, it is a mild project which suggests that our folk psychological vocabulary of mental states is outdated. At other turns, it denies that there are mental states to be misrepresented in the first place. I must admit, that if I were a robot, I might find their arguments might be quite compelling (hence Chalmers quipped that Dennett's incorrigibility might be a result of him being a p-zombie), however, I find that the overall thrust of eliminativism has been to avoid what is really hard (or impossible) to explain. I am happy to leave consciousness as the frog staring up at us from the bottom of the mug, a great unexplained thing leftover from our explanations--if the pull of folk-psychology is a sort of derangement, then so too is the pull to feel the need to explain absolutely everything.
Comment by ReaperReader at 17/01/2020 at 09:24 UTC
2 upvotes, 0 direct replies
so to reject consciousness as an "illusion" is to reject the tempting desire to assign consciousness an extra-material characteristic.
I don't follow. If you reject consciousness as an illusion, haven't you just assigned something an extra-material characteristic (namely the illusion)? As a rejection strategy, this strikes me as being about as effective as rejecting ice cream by eating the whole contents of the carton.
Comment by antonivs at 17/01/2020 at 10:43 UTC
2 upvotes, 1 direct replies
But again that is not because we have yet to discover some hidden essence of the soul, but because we lack deep enough cognitive/neuro/computer-scientific grounded explanation, at present.
That's a statement of belief, which doesn't really engage with the topic except to say you've decided what the nature of the conclusion will eventualy be.
Comment by _xxxtemptation_ at 16/01/2020 at 23:14 UTC
2 upvotes, 0 direct replies
How does having an cognitive/neuro/computer science based explanation of the nature of consciousness make it any less of a soul? It would seem that if a mathematical model that generates subjective experience through a complex organization of matter was discovered, it would still be an immaterial explanation and therefore little different than a soul. Remember the dualist is not necessarily arguing that matter is not the substance which gives rise to consciousness, but rather that consciousness is not matter in and of itself.
Comment by eaglessoar at 17/01/2020 at 15:01 UTC
1 upvotes, 1 direct replies
you cannot prove consciousness, you cannot prove free will, you feel like you have it but you cannot even conceive of a test you could run on yourself or any other person which would prove free will. free will defies the laws of physics.
youd do just as well to look for the nail in your head when you feel a headache as you would to look for free will when you feel like you made a decision.
Comment by [deleted] at 16/01/2020 at 21:55 UTC
-2 upvotes, 1 direct replies
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