Existence or nonexistence of subjectivity in a given system is a well-defined and well-posed boolean-valued question. It is admittedly an undecideable question in cases other than one’s own.
We already know from Godel that well-posed questions can be undecidable. Decidability is not identical to well-posedness.
As for nature’s joints, I am not alone in the view that the mind/matter dichotomy is the clearest and most crucial one of all. The problem is not that the line is drawn in the wrong place. The problem is that the relationship between the subjective and the objective is mysterious.
Where I’m a bit idiosyncratic, I think, is this:
I don’t think the persistence of the mind/matter dichotomy is some peculiar and minor gap in science that will soon be filled in. I strongly suspect, rather, that it’s a deeply fundamental fact of the universe. In other words, the phenomenon of mind, i.e., subjectivity itself, cannot be fully reduced to objectively observable processes, and any attempt to do so is necessarily logically flawed.
Mine is not a widely held opinion, but I’m not sure why not. If there were a purely objective explanation of how subjective experience arises from an inanimate universe, what could it possibly look like?
Tiiba,
Existence or nonexistence of subjectivity in a given system is a well-defined and well-posed boolean-valued question. It is admittedly an undecideable question in cases other than one’s own.
We already know from Godel that well-posed questions can be undecidable. Decidability is not identical to well-posedness.
As for nature’s joints, I am not alone in the view that the mind/matter dichotomy is the clearest and most crucial one of all. The problem is not that the line is drawn in the wrong place. The problem is that the relationship between the subjective and the objective is mysterious.
Where I’m a bit idiosyncratic, I think, is this:
I don’t think the persistence of the mind/matter dichotomy is some peculiar and minor gap in science that will soon be filled in. I strongly suspect, rather, that it’s a deeply fundamental fact of the universe. In other words, the phenomenon of mind, i.e., subjectivity itself, cannot be fully reduced to objectively observable processes, and any attempt to do so is necessarily logically flawed.
Mine is not a widely held opinion, but I’m not sure why not. If there were a purely objective explanation of how subjective experience arises from an inanimate universe, what could it possibly look like?