Sounds like you are already a believer but I wonder if this is an argument from ignorance at work. Personally I am sympathetic to mysterianism. The question of climate change and other physically understood problems will matter a lot more in this timeframe than resolving the consciousness puzzle. Are you an idealist along Kastrup lines? — Tom Storm
You've now switched from "adequate" to "complete". How would we ever be able to tell whether any explanation, whether physical or phenomenological, is complete? — Janus
Also, you seem to be implying that if we had an adequate explanation (for one or the other?) that physical explanations would substitute for phenomenological ones. — Janus
In that case we cannot conclude that physical explanations cannot substitute for phenomenological explanations. — Fooloso4
Like e.g. gravity? QM? neoDarwinian evolution? germ theory of disease? "Just theories", huh? :roll:... still just that: a theory. [ ... ] still just a theory. — RogueAI
Does anyone philosophically assume that liquid comes from solid or gas vapor comes from liquid or ... digesting comes from guts? Perhaps "mind"(ing) is just a phase-state of "matter"; IIRC, Greek atomism, for instance, had speculated that this is so (though, of course, they couldn't provide a 'scientific explanation' which subsequently had given rise to X-of-the-gaps duality like Platonism, etc).At what point do we start questioning the assumption that consciousness comes from matter?
No doubt. Flat earthism is becoming "more popular" too, btw.I think idealism and dualism will become more popular with a corresponding dip in materialism. That could be my own bias. — RogueAI
No doubt, but what does a "phenomenological explanation" actually explain?The point is that physical explanations cannot substitute for phenomenological explanations ... — Janus
I don't think your ontological leanings result in any necissary barrier to contributing to science or philosophy, especially if you're willing to consider evidence for opposing views in stride. — Count Timothy von Icarus
Whether we will have a complete explanation of consciousness in material or physical terms remains to be seen. — Fooloso4
Materialists are sustained by the faith that science will redeem their promises, turning their beliefs into facts. Meanwhile, they live on credit. The philosopher of science Sir Karl Popper described this faith as "promissory materialism" because it depends on promissory notes for discoveries not yet made. — Rupert Sheldrake
The "hard" problem is not difficult because it has to prove that something like "mind" does not exist. It is difficult because the 'duality' of experience is one of the phenomena that has to be explained. — Paine
The modern mind-body problem arose out of the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century, as a direct result of the concept of objective physical reality that drove that revolution. Galileo and Descartes made the crucial conceptual division by proposing that physical science should provide a mathematically precise quantitative description of an external reality extended in space and time, a description limited to spatiotemporal primary qualities such as shape, size, and motion, and to laws governing the relations among them. Subjective appearances, on the other hand -- how this physical world appears to human perception -- were assigned to the mind, and the secondary qualities like color, sound, and smell were to be analyzed relationally, in terms of the power of physical things, acting on the senses, to produce those appearances in the minds of observers. It was essential to leave out or subtract subjective appearances and the human mind -- as well as human intentions and purposes -- from the physical world in order to permit this powerful but austere spatiotemporal conception of objective physical reality to develop. — Thomas Nagel, Mind and Cosmos, p 35-6
No doubt, but what does a "phenomenological explanation" actually explain? — 180 Proof
To be sure, it "understands" what you say to it to some degree. Otherwise it could not hold coherent conversations, but it doesn't have a subjective experience of the conversation (maybe, panpsychists would disagree). — Count Timothy von Icarus
Agreed. That's how it differs from an "physical explanation" – phenomenology describes, not explains (i.e. maps, not models).Perhaps "explication" or "description" would be a better word. — Janus
Some claim that consciousness or intelligence is fundamental, but at present we have no way to settle the issue one way or the other. — Fooloso4
Phenomenological explanations are reflections on the nature of first person experience. — Janus
But look at the way post-Galilean (i.e. 'modern') science goes about that: by the division of the world into the 'primary attributes' of mass, velocity, momentum and so on, and 'secondary qualities' presumed to inhere in the mind, thereby subjectivizing them. That is precisely the paradigm wiithin which the question arises. — Wayfarer
It was essential to leave out or subtract subjective appearances and the human mind -- as well as human intentions and purposes -- from the physical world in order to permit this powerful but austere spatiotemporal conception of objective physical reality to develop. — Thomas Nagel, Mind and Cosmos, p 35-6
Actually there is a way to settle this, and that is to understand and accept the very obvious reality, and simple truth, that consciousness is fundamental. — Metaphysician Undercover
Cognitive science does not leave out subjective appearances or the human mind from the physical world. It attempts to understand the mind and experience as part of the physical world. — Fooloso4
My point is that the models, in this case, are attempting to verify their validity against the very elements it cannot include within in itself. They attempt to overcome the duality that the method brought into existence. — Paine
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