[Wittrs] Re: On the Varieties of Dualism: Phenomenological Dualism
- From: "SWM" <SWMirsky@xxxxxxx>
- To: wittrsamr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 01 Feb 2010 14:41:50 -0000
--- In Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, "BruceD" <blroadies@...> wrote:
> --- In Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, "SWM" <SWMirsky@> wrote:
>
> > there IS NO REASON TO ASSUME DUALISM TO EXPLAIN THE OCCURRENCE OF
> CONSCIOUSNESS!
>
> There is no reason to assume anything ( no substance of any kind,
> whether one or two) to explain the "occurrence of consciousness" if, by
> that term, you mean "being conscious" because "being conscious" is just
> part of being alive and there is nothing to explain. Unless you want to
> explain why there are human beings in the first place.
>
> bruce
>
What needs to be explained is how brains do what they do. This isn't an
argument about how or why there are people or brains or about the metaphysical
nature of the universe itself, whether one, two, three or more ontological
basics. It's about how best to understand the features we encounter everyday as
"mind".
Some want to say that, because consciousness isn't a physical thing, physical
things cannot affect it nor it them, which leads to a mind-body problem as we
already know. Thus one needs to develop an account of how the interaction
between minds and the world and between brains and minds that is obvious occurs
and what it amounts to.
Hence, too, the accounting for minds in the world as being of a derivation that
is somehow different than that of which non-mental phenomena are derived, i.e.,
the argument for a dualist explanation of how things are!
But if one can account for how minds occur and act as they do by an explanation
of brains alone, and nothing extra physical is brought into the equation, then
one needn't posit dualism and can safely disregard the question of what does or
does not underlie the universe at some really deep fundamental level entirely.
Thus this isn't about the metaphysics but about conceptualizing consciousness,
i.e., can we account for what we mean by mind by reference to what brains do?
(I think I should just make a note of this explanation and periodically re-post
it here in response to your ever-recycling arguments. It might save us both a
lot of time and trouble.)
SWM
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