[Wittrs] Re: When is "brain talk" really dualism?
- From: "Stuart W. Mirsky" <SWMirsky@xxxxxxx>
- To: Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 14 Aug 2009 21:19:50 -0000
--- In Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, "blroadies" <blroadies@...> wrote:
>
>
> --- In Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, "Stuart W. Mirsky" <SWMirsky@> wrote:
>
> > > In what way is having a mental life different from having a life?
>
> > It refers to having subjective (private) experience.
>
> In the spirit of fairness. I want to draw your attention to a Post I
> just wrote to Glen in which tried to express what I believe you are
> saying here, namely, that as a non-dualist you are not rejecting
> subjectivity, mind, "inner experience" but, if I get it right, you are
> placing all that as causal end-product of brain activity.
>
> bruce
>
Yes, that's about right though I might have expressed it differently. To be a
dualist is to suppose there are at least two ontological basics in the
universe, typically mind and matter, and that neither is explainable as
reducible to the other. My view, as you rightly note, is that what we call
mind, what we call consciousness, IS explainable by reduction to what brains
do. Thus I would say that mind is a function of the physical as much as
everything else in a wholly physical universe.
Although some want to call this monist (the opposite of dualist), I demur
because I don't see a lot of value in arguing or even theorizing about such
metaphysical positions. I don't deny we have metaphysical positions, just the
efficacy of debating them. I hold to a default physical monism but not to any
fully articulated or elaborated theory of this, nor do I think one can argue
that that is (or isn't) the way things are because I think all such arguments
are beyond provability.
Recognizing that we mean something different by "minds" and "brains" is not
dualism, on my view, nor does it preclude an argument for reduction of one to
the other.
SWM
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