[Wittrs] Re: Eliminative Materialism
- From: "SWM" <SWMirsky@xxxxxxx>
- To: wittrsamr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 04 Apr 2010 23:17:24 -0000
--- In Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, Gordon Swobe <wittrsamr@...> wrote:
> --- On Sun, 4/4/10, SWM <wittrsamr@...> wrote:
>
> >> The eliminativist doubles his mistake when he, a la
> >> Dennett, falsely labels those don't fall into the same trap
> >> "Cartesians".
> >
> >
> > Now THAT you need to defend
>
> As Joe and others have repeatedly tried to explain, and as I now also try to
> explain, you suggest wrongly that Searle's view in some way entails something
> you call Cartesian dualism.
>
"Ontological dualism" and you have yet to argue why I am wrong. You have only
asserted it. Joe, at least, made arguments.
> I can understand why you might continue to make that mistake: you favor
> Dennett's philosophy. You see his as confirmation of yours, and his reeks of
> eliminativism.
>
Again, I started out "favoring" Searle's interpretation. I came to the view
Dennnett holds before even reading Dennett. In fact it was solely from reading
Searle. If Dennett did not agree with my view, I would not "favor" his.
> Under the guise of rejecting dualism and so-called folk psychology,
> eliminativists attempt to deny or to "explain away" the common-sense notions
> of qualia and intentional states.
These notions are not "common sense". In fact the terms are not even found in
ordinary language. They belong to the rarified world of technical philosophy.
They do reflect an intuition many of us have but, as terms, they do no work in
ordinary language.
> They simply fail to grasp how one can affirm the common-sense ordinary
> understanding of intentional states (as fundamental and intrinsic to
> consciousness) without also accepting something they falsely label "Cartesian
> dualism".
>
Actually, they note how the failure to grasp that consciousness need not be
explained as an ontological basic is driven by an attachment to a particular
way of thinking that is embedded deeply in our linguistic limitations.
> In Dennett's case, instead of affirming intrinsic intentionality, he posits
> an obscurantist/eliminativist philosophy of "the intentional stance" that
> denies or at best ignores the truth about
> intentionality.
His is a different account. That it is different than yours or Searle's hardly
means it is a denial of a "truth". In fact, you and Searle might be the ones
denying the truer claim. But we can only determine this by considering the
merits of the respective cases, not by impugning motives or reiterative
assertions.
> He does not admit that intentionality exists as something intrinsic to minds
> as opposed to something merely ascribed to them by observers.
>
His is a different account, designed to get at the odd usages in language that
treat something we sometimes call "intentionality" as things, entities.
> Unlike Dennett, Searle affirms the ordinary understanding of intentionality
> as something intrinsic to the mind. He takes mental states at face value, in
> need of no elimination or reduction. Dennett wrongly see that as evidence of
> dualism. (And it seems apparent that > you do too.)
And Searle's approach leads to a failed argument about what computers can do.
That alone is reason to question Searle's way of thinking about this.
>
> I've already explained how they make that mistake: they fail to see that
> after we truly reject Cartesian dualism, we can then assign first-person
> irreducible mental properties to brain matter in a straightforward manner,
> consistent with common sense, and we can do this without the problems
> associated with dualism.
>
> -gts
>
What makes you think there is a failure to see that we can explain the
occurence of mental phenomena by explaining what brains do by resorting to a
different way of accounting for mind? After all, the idea of "assigning"
"irreducible mental properties to brain matter" is precisely the mistake that
leads to the flawed argument found in the CRA.
SWM
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