. Make reductive, ‘third-person’ models of the brain central to metaphysics discussion.
The mind body problem is key to much of metaphysics.
If we had satisfactory reductive models of all prima facie mental phenomena, there would be no mind body problem in the first place, any more than there is a heat-atom problem. So what does this piece of advice mean?
Lower the bar on what counts as satisfactory explanation?
Or dismiss the existence of what you can’t explain?
There’s plenty of evidence of both in the rationalsphere. There’s a reluctance to treat reductive explanation as something that is capable of failing, a tendency to treat reductionism as something you believe by faith rather than something that produces predictions that can be confirmed or not.
I don’t see why. Even if I thought panpsychism were true, I don’t think it would help resolve most of the things analytic philosopher metaphysicians are debating.
Things like idealsm versus dualism versus materialism are topics in metaphysics that are downstream of the MBP. -- there’s no motivation to reject materliasim other than accounting for subjectivity/consciousness. Other topics, like realism versus conceptualism versus nominalism are not particularly downstream of the MBP.
The mind body problem is key to much of metaphysics.
If we had satisfactory reductive models of all prima facie mental phenomena, there would be no mind body problem in the first place, any more than there is a heat-atom problem. So what does this piece of advice mean?
Lower the bar on what counts as satisfactory explanation?
Or dismiss the existence of what you can’t explain?
There’s plenty of evidence of both in the rationalsphere. There’s a reluctance to treat reductive explanation as something that is capable of failing, a tendency to treat reductionism as something you believe by faith rather than something that produces predictions that can be confirmed or not.
And also a level of popularity to illusionism.
You’re quoting from my section on metaphysics, not my section on philosophy of mind.
I know. “The mind body problem is key to much of metaphysics”.
I don’t see why. Even if I thought panpsychism were true, I don’t think it would help resolve most of the things analytic philosopher metaphysicians are debating.
Things like idealsm versus dualism versus materialism are topics in metaphysics that are downstream of the MBP. -- there’s no motivation to reject materliasim other than accounting for subjectivity/consciousness. Other topics, like realism versus conceptualism versus nominalism are not particularly downstream of the MBP.