[Wittrs] Re: Understanding Dualism
- From: "walto" <walterhorn@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: wittrsamr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 25 Aug 2010 13:40:14 -0000
--- In Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, "gabuddabout" <wittrsamr@...> wrote:
>
>
>
> --- In WittrsAMR@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, "walto" <wittrsamr@> wrote:
> >
> >
> >
> > --- In Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, "SWM" <SWMirsky@> wrote:
> > >
> >
> > > He does say it would be better to drop the categories except that his
> > > article was written in response to the accusation that his position IS
> > > property dualism.
>
> So he is condemned to the categories just by responding that he's not a
> property dualist--so he must be, yada, yada..
>
>
> > > As part of that response he asserted that there is no difference, at
> > > bottom, between property dualism and substance dualism.
>
>
> At least one specific form of, i.e., Chalmers version which is the
> epiphenomenal view of consciousness that Searle thinks mistaken. Chalmers
> thinks consciousness is real while doing absolutely no work--and that amounts
> to a form of substance dualism. Other epiphenomenalists may espouse
> something like a form of mysterianism in the follwing way: No amount of
> empirical research is going to net us exactly how some physical system is
> conscious, consciousness being some subjective category that can't be touched
> via third person points of view. You might even find Dennett here given that
> he doesn't deny he's conscious sometimes. In fact, Dennett's reason for
> thinking strong AI viable is by denying that minds have semantics (proposed
> functionalism of content even though you may never grasp what this means no
> matter how many times I explain why functional explanation for Searle is not
> good enough science for a science of mind, including cognitive science as
> well as far as Fodor is concerned, but never mind this as always) is exactly
> as mysterian as other property dualists who claim not to be substance
> dualists. Searle would say that that can't be an a priori argument for the
> futility of searching for empirical generalizations concerning NCCs. So,
> plenty of property dualists who are not necessarily substance dualists,
> including Dennett, while Searle is explaining why we need not use this
> outmoded vocabulary anymore. Can he pull it off? Well, he needs readers who
> get him right, firstly.
>
>
>
> > > Walter, whether he likes me to reference his words or not, asserted that
> > > Searle wrongly characterized "property dualism" and that, if so, Searle
> > > WOULD actually be rightly classified as a "property dualist". I added, in
> > > my response to Walter that, in light of my agreement with Searle's own
> > > point that property dualism is, finally, just another form of substance
> > > dualism, if it is dualism at all, then Searle would also be a substance
> > > dualist.
>
>
> > Here's what I think about this:
> >
> > (1) There are no property dualists of the type Searle disses in his paper.
> >
>
> Chalmers would be a counterexample to this claim.
>
>
> > Because (2) what he there calls "property dualists" are, as he points at
> > the end of his paper actually substance dualists. (They've got different
> > "cake layers.")
>
> Chalmers's version of propery dualism is to allow for consciousness as a
> feature (an epiphenomenal one) of the world that does no causal work.
> Traditional substance dualists try to have it both ways--nonphysical
> substance sometimes interfering with the physical world. Chalmers' version
> amounts to a substance dualism, too, even if not a traditional one. Maybe
> that's a new thing to be learned by noticing a possible taxonomy of issues,
> like the famous C.D. Broad's 15 or so positions in philosophy of mind.
> >
> > (3) On a more traditional definition of "property dualism" (i.e. causal,
> > but not what he calls "ontological reducibility"), he actually IS a
> > property dualist as am I (and, I'm guessing all the non-computationalists
> > who aren't Cartesians).
>
> But he doesn't want to count as one even though you refuse to go along with
> his preferred vocabulary. Causal reducibility without ontological
> reducibilty does not necessarily entail property dualism. Maybe it does by
> fiat. But the point is that there are no more physical properties to account
> for other than those of brains to get consciousness as "something" (some
> cake-level, middle-sized frontier of brain juice). And just because we want
> to refer to ontological subjectivity as irreducible from an ontological point
> of view, it is the causal reducibility which Searle would a Walter to
> understand as a position that is not property dualism:
>
> 1. That rock is wet. Wetness doesn't amount to property dualism.
>
> 2. That brain is currently conscious. Consciousness doesn't amount to
> property dualism--it's just a state it may be in.
>
> 3. That we inherit the Cartesian vocabulary makes it sound like consciousness
> names that very different substance Descartes was talking about. The point
> is that it needn't.
>
> 4. So that this isn't merely a quibble about using different vocabularies for
> saying the same thing:
>
> 5. On Searle's view, good science of mind would include looking for NCCs.
>
> 6. On a property dualist's view of the Chalmers stamp: Why bother if
> consciousness is an epiphenomenon?
>
> 7. On Walter's sense of the traditional view of property dualism amounting to
> the view of causal reducibilty without ontological reduction, there is a
> venerable tradition of nonreductive physicalists, of which he maintains both
> that Searle and himself are two.
>
> 8. So Walter is perfectly right in his 4. below.
>
> 9. I don't think, contra Walter's 5., that Searle is making too big of a
> mess. I refer to 3. above.
>
> So 10. I think Searle makes some sense out of how Chalmers's version of
> property dualism is a kind of substance dualism. And how the inheritance of
> Cartesian vocabulary makes some other forms of traditional property dualism
> look the same way (many, like Armstrong and some qualia-deniers, including
> Dennett), even though nonreductive physicalists think they are still
> physicalists--let's drop the Cartesian categories and stop calling
> nonreductive physicalism a form of property dualism. Ontological
> subjectivity may be a unique thing in the world, but so is everything else,
> individualistically speaking. Getting rid of the outmoded terminology would
> be a step in a direction that helps others see exactly what Walter ends up
> claiming: The taxonomy issues don't make a difference--unless they do.
>
> Hence Searle's paper. I think it was a help in understanding why Searle
> thinks he is not a property dualist. Without it, then, like Walter, maybe I
> would refer to him as a property dualist just because the original property
> dualists are exactly of his stamp: causal reducibility without ontological
> reducibility.
>
> But it is still misleading: Searle is trying to say that consciousness is as
> ordinary a feature of a brain as digestion is of a stomach, even if it is a
> unique feature entailing ontological subjectivity.
>
> Others seize on the traditional Cartesian categories in order to call such a
> position dualist. This is even after Searle thought they might have been
> able to grasp his prose.. That they won't out of sheer stubbornness is
> another matter--I even heard it said that one way to "refute" someone's
> thesis is simply not to consider it. One way of doing such would be to call
> it by the name of an issue that doesn't make a difference. A taxonomic issue.
>
> Funny how one can have it both ways here: Calling it a taxonomic issue that
> doesn't make a difference is one thing, while such calling is supposed to
> make a difference in terms of our not reading Searle's paper with interest
> because it boils down to a taxonomic issue. That the taxonomic issue makes
> it tough for Searle to get his point across, on the other hand, seems more
> than a taxonomic issue; even a reason for reading his paper on why, after all
> the taxonomic issues, he's STILL not a property dualist.
>
>
Both you and Stuart seem to me to make several good points regarding my
classification system, and I don't want to suggest that either of you are wrong
in doing so: however, I think of what I was doing as more of a stipulative
thing, and I think my take is much more simple (and hence probably considerably
less nuanced) than what either of you are getting at.
Here's my take:
Anybody who thinks that every item in the world is a physical object is a
physicalist, and hence a substance monist.
However, not everybody substance monist believes that every property is
(ontologically) reducible to some group of "physical properties": if among the
properties that some physicalist believes are not reducible to physical
properties are mental properties, then such a person is (at least) a property
dualist.
In the paper under discussion, Searle cops to both substance monism and
property dualism, given my description of those.
He also indicates the sort of philosophy HE takes to be property dualism, and
it turns out really to be a species of substance dualism as I understand that
term.
You may be right that Chalmers is some sort of quasi-this or that, so when I
said that there aren't any property dualists of the kind Searle discusses, my
exaggeration may have been false. But I note that he doesn't give a single
example of any, and I think it's better to let others speak for themselves than
to attack straw men.
You both get into deeper issues than my class system, like, e.g., what does it
mean to ontologically reduce? and what is dualism, really? etc. Those are hard
and interesting, but it's not really what I was talking about.
So, I'll say one final time, that I agree with the substantive position Searle
takes in that paper (and yes, I know and have understood for many years that
Stuart does not), but (not that it matters one little bit) I think it's more
natural to call this position I share with Searle "property dualism."
[Meanwhile, Budd, you're wanted elsewhere, where a discussion (that you
requested!) is going on with respect to a certain Fodor paper.]
W
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