From: holmes@opal.idbsu.edu (Randall Holmes)
Subject: Re: Dualism
Organization: Boise State University
Date: Mon, 28 Sep 1992 15:22:08 GMT

In article <Bv9BKL.IIs@usenet.ucs.indiana.edu> chalmers@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu (David Chalmers) writes:
>In article <1992Sep25.194311.138446@Cookie.secapl.com> frank@Cookie.secapl.com (Frank Adams) writes:
>
>>What I am asserting is that you are looking for (insisting on) the wrong
>>kind of explanation of consciousness, and that the reason you are looking
>>for this kind of explanation is that you refuse to take seriously the idea
>>that you are a physical system.  If you really accept this, then an
>>explanation in the form "these aspects of the system are your
>>consciousness; when it gets these kinds of inputs, it reacts in this kind
>>of way, which is your qualia" *is* a full explanation of consciousness. I
>>don't think it is necessary to *agree* that "you are a physical system" to
>>understand this; although for me personally, when I understood this point,
>>my last objections to physicalism disappeared.
>
>Well, this seems to be the net.physicalist.position.of.choice.  Qualia
>just *are* physical events; don't ask why.  Unfortunately, it's
>entirely unsatisfactory.  For this position to be any good, you have to
>provide some reason why God couldn't have created a world with isomorphic
>physical events, but no qualia.  And that's what you can't do.  Note
>that "qualia are physical, therefore She couldn't" is utterly circular,
>as the physicality of qualia is precisely what's at issue.  (Though
>the passage above suggests that you want to be able to take it as an
>unquestioned axiom.)
>
>This position seems to flirt between some kind of property dualism
>(qualia are a new kind of thing in the catalog of the universe; *but*
>they're physical, no doubt about it) and some kind of brute physicalism
>(everything's physical and don't ask why).  Either way, the call for
>an entailment relation (or alternatively, the call for an explanation
>of why qualia exist at all) is being evaded entirely.
>
>-- 
>Dave Chalmers                            (dave@cogsci.indiana.edu)      
>Center for Research on Concepts and Cognition, Indiana University.
>"It is not the least charm of a theory that it is refutable."

I'm afraid that you are suffering from a linguistic confusion too
tangled for me to try to unravel.  If the physical facts are the
qualia, no entailment is needed.  No additional facts about physical
events need be assumed (what look like new facts are simply
translations of sentences from a hitherto incommensurable domain of
discourse).  Certainly, if you _assume_, _by arbitrary fiat_, a
difference between physical events and qualia, you can keep asking
these questions.  God could certainly create a world which looks the
same superficially in which there _is_ a difference between "qualia"
and any and all "physical events in the brain"; IT could also create a
world, superficially similar to ours on a macroscopic level, in which
heat was a sign of the presence of caloric.  Possible worlds whose
similarity to ours is based only on our limited state of knowledge
have no standing in the kind of argument you are trying to make.

-- 
The opinions expressed		|     --Sincerely,
above are not the "official"	|     M. Randall Holmes
opinions of any person		|     Math. Dept., Boise State Univ.
or institution.			|     holmes@opal.idbsu.edu
Xref: sparky sci.philosophy.tech:3546 sci.math:12676 sci.physics:15888 sci.astro:10404