2009/8/27 David Nyman <david.nyman.domain.name.hidden>:
> There's something trickier here, too. When you say "unless you are
> the system", this masks an implicit - and dualistic - assumption in
> addition to PM monism. It is axiomatic that any properly monistic
> materialist account must hold all properties of a system to be
> extrinsic, and hence capable of *exhaustive* extrinsic formulation.
> IOW if it's not extrinsically describable, it doesn't exist in terms
> of PM. So what possible difference could it make, under this
> restriction, to 'be' the system? If the reply is that it makes just
> the somewhat epoch-making difference of conjuring up an otherwise
> unknowable world of qualitative experience, can we still lay claim to
> a monistic ontology, in any sense that doesn't beggar the term?
Perhaps not, but it's just words. Materialists use "dualism" as a term
of abuse, and some materialists will call anyone who thinks a lot
about consciousness a dualist, while some of those who think a lot
about consciousness will do anything to avoid being called that.
--
Stathis Papaioannou
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Received on Thu Aug 27 2009 - 23:19:19 PDT