[Wittrs] Dualism Cooties: Searle Diverges from Zombie Physicalism

  • From: Joseph Polanik <jpolanik@xxxxxxxxx>
  • To: wittrsamr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Wed, 17 Mar 2010 07:39:17 -0400

SWM wrote:

>Searle, of course, peels off subjectness from the rest of the universe
>by asserting that it has a "first person ontology" which cannot be
>dealt with in a third person way. But what does that mean, finally?

it means that first person phenomenology has an experiencer dependent
mode of existence; whereas, third person phenomenology has an
experiencer independent mode of existence.

>Searle, after all, agrees that the universe is physical but then he
>diverges from this when he invokes "first person ontology" claims
>(suggesting either that there is something in the universe that isn't
>physical -- or that there is something brought into existence by some
>physical things in the universe that isn't).

yes. Searle 'diverges' from zombie physicalism by claiming that
something that has a third person ontology (a brain) can create
something that has a first person ontology --- for example, an
afterimage.

>Insofar as ontology is about reductive description it is about what
>causes what (as in what is responsible for what).

ontology is about what there is.

>But Searle, while asserting his claim about consciousness being a
>matter of first person ontology, agrees that brains, perfectly physical
>things, cause consciousness! Thus his notion of ontology appears rather
>idiosyncratic because he separates causal descriptions from what we may
>want to characterize for want of a better term, as observational
>descriptions.

ontology *always* makes the distinction between appearances and what
causes or otherwise accounts for the appearances.

Joe



--

Nothing Unreal is Self-Aware

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