Win,
Aha. Well, that is quite a bit different. It raises the obvious question, though. If set A is not causally closed with respect to set Ur, then what criteria have been used to designate what is in set A, and what is not?
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For the purposes of the current discussion, let's say that what is not in set A is phenomenal consciousness. Everything else is.
This is exactly what I have done in my explanation of set A'. If the only distinction between set A, and set A', is that set A does not include phenomenal consciousness, and set A' does, and is causally closed, then why create the arbitrary distinction between set A and set A' at all?
If we observe an effect which we can determined to be caused by property X*, as you described above, then by what criteria do we say that property X* is a member of set Ur (non-physical) instead of set A (physical)?
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I wouldn't say that prediction X, about set A, has been caused by phenomenal property A*. Rather, theory X makes prediction X about the physical world and also has as a consequence the attribution of property X* to the phenomenal world, which is otherwise unobservable.
How is this different from what is done in modern physics all the time? We construct a theory which makes observable predictions, and includes some otherwise unobservable thing like an electron or a quark. Then we conclude the
physical existence of that electron or quark from the success of that theory.
And the Ur-set, strictly speaking, isn't physical. It subsumes both set A (physical) and set b (phenomenal).
It seems to me that the only difference between your property dualism, and physicalism,is how you define "physical". If I define physical to be anything that can be described in terms of our observations, through the application of the scientific method, then clearly my definition of physical includes the entire causally closed set A', which includes both what you are calling physical (set A), and what you are calling phenomenal (set B).
In what sense does the entire set A' not qualify as being physical? You have already claimed that we should be able to employ the scientific method, and through observation determine what the properties of this set A' are. So in what sense is set A' not the set of all physical things? What characteristic distinguishes the elements of set A from the elements of set A' that are not in set A?
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I don't see the distinction between A and A'.
Set A' includes anything in set Ur that can be detected and described through the process you listed before, of constructing a theory that predicts an observation X in set A, and also attributes a property X* to the phenomenal World. Set A' is defined to include set A, as well as all such properties X*.
Set A' is then clearly causally closed, and is, in fact,
exactly what is meant by "physical" in science (and physicalism).
Put in plain English, if you claim that it is possible to use the scientific method to describe the phenomenal world in terms of our observations, then this is exactly what physicalists mean when they say that phenomenal consciousness is physical.
That is only a valid argument if you claim that materialism is not a possible explanation. If you can logically reject materialism as a possibility, then it is not the most parsimonious explanation, because it is not an explanation at all. But as long as you accept the possibility of it, the parsimony argument is valid.
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I do reject reductive materialism as a possible explanation for phenomenal consciousness. I allow that elliminative materialism is a possible explanation, but only at the cost of denying the existence of phenomenal consciousness.
But what is it that is really being eliminated? It is not the experience. It is not your direct access to the experience. It is simply the notion that there is anything non-physical to it. We (eliminative materialists) are pretending that something we have does not exist. We are simply not making the assumption that what we have is non-physical.
That's why I think parsimony is inapplicable.
Parsimony is only inapplicable if you can logically argue that there must be some non-physical aspect to the experience. That is, that the part of the experience you have "direct access" to is not also a part of the physical world.
In what sense can you do this? You know only that you have direct access to your experiences, but what is the nature of the "you" that has this direct access? If the "you" is simply a function of your brain, then the thing you have direct access to is also physical.
Of course, metaphysical materialism is still possible, but it has it's problems too, namely that it doesn't make any sense, to me at least.
It doesn't make any sense at all. Like metaphysical dualism, and metaphysical idealism, it is incoherent. It is thus meaningless to say that it is possible or impossible.
I would argue that the existence of phenomenal consciousness (and here I assume you are referring to something that is defined to be non-physical), is not a given. It may or may not exist. If your only reason for believing it exists is intuitive, then that is not a valid justification for rejecting the more parsimonious explanation. Note that the direct access argument does not apply here, because what is in question is not whether we have direct access to our experiences, but whether phenomenal consciousness is, in fact, what we have direct access to. Under materialism, we still have direct access to our experiences. Those experiences are just brain processes, and the "we" that has direct access to them is just other brain processes.
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I haven't defined phenomenal consciousness to be non-physical. I've concluded that it is, in part from the failure of reductive materialism.
What failure? In what way is reductive materialism not possible?
Given the choice between eliminative materialism and property dualism, I chose the latter because it takes the existence of phenomenal consciousness into account.
I don't really see the distinction between eliminative and reductive materialism. It seems to me to simply depend on how you define "phenomenal consciousness". If you define it to be "the raw experience, independent of any physical process", then I would say that it does not exist, because I do not think that the experience has any existence independent of the physical process, just as there is no such thing as "raw computation". But if you define it to be the part of the experience that we have direct access to, then I would say that it is physical.
They are both the same position, as far as I can tell.
Is it really necessary? If you cannot reject the possibility that they don't exist, then it is not necessary.
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But I can reject it. My direct access demonstrates the existence of phenomenal consciousness. Because I accept the fact of the existence of phenomenal consciousness, I am compelled to adopt a property dualistic position.
It seems to me like you are defining "phenomenal consciousness" in one way to reject reductive materialism, and then defining it in a different way to reject eliminative materialism.
If phenomenal consciousness is what you have direct access to, then you can only eliminate reductive materialism by demonstrating that it could not possibly be physical. If phenomenal consciousness is the raw experience, then you can only reject eliminative materialism by demonstrating that the raw experience exists, and is what we have direct access to.
If you simultaneously define phenomenal consciousness to be both what we have direct access to, and the "raw experience", then you are simply begging the question that what we have direct access to is not physical.
What is the implication that you do not accept?
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Learning implies storage.
Then I am afraid I have no idea what you mean by the word "learning".
Here's another way to look at it. Certainly you would agree that learning something implies that you are in some way different after you have learned it, right?
So what is different after you have learned a phenomenal fact? Your body is not any different, and you seem to have defined phenomenal consciousness in such a way that it cannot meaningfully be said to be different.
If I have no memory of phenomenal experiences, then why doesn't each one seem unique?
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Take a memory, your mother's face say. The phenomenal experience of having that memory should be substantially similar each time you have it, because it's the phenomenal experience of the same memory.
But if there is no storage of phenomenal information, then how can a comparison be made? For that matter, if there is no phenomenal information processing, then in what sense can any sort of evaluation of the phenomenal information be made?
It sounds like you are defining phenomenal consciousness to literally be nothing. So far the only characteristic you have attributed to it is that we have direct access to it. But
what has direct access to it, if not our brains?
Dr. Stupid
