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Full Idea
The main obstacle to mind-body reduction is qualia.
Gist of Idea
Reductionism gets stuck with qualia
Source
Jaegwon Kim (Philosophy of Mind [1996], p.236)
Book Ref
Kim,Jaegwon: 'Philosophy of Mind' [Westview 1998], p.236
A Reaction
Personally I am also impressed by Leibniz's Mill (Idea 2109). No microscope could ever reveal the contents of thought. How can it be so vivid for the owner, but totally undetectable to an observer?
Related Idea
Idea 2109 Increase a conscious machine to the size of a mill - you still won't see perceptions in it [Leibniz]
| 3529 | Reduction is impossible because mind is holistic and brain isn't [Davidson, by Maslin] |
| 3964 | If the mind is an anomaly, this makes reduction of the mental to the physical impossible [Davidson] |
| 5798 | Consciousness has a first-person ontology, so it cannot be reduced without omitting something [Searle] |
| 2314 | Maybe intentionality is reducible, but qualia aren't [Kim] |
| 3427 | Reductionism is impossible if there aren't any 'bridge laws' between mental and physical [Kim] |
| 3439 | Reductionism gets stuck with qualia [Kim] |
| 4091 | The problems of misrepresentation and error have dogged physicalist reductions of intentionality [Crane] |
| 4601 | Higher-level sciences cannot be reduced, because their concepts mark boundaries invisible at lower levels [Heil] |
| 4602 | Higher-level sciences designate real properties of objects, which are not reducible to lower levels [Heil] |
| 2533 | Rule-following can't be reduced to the physical [Sturgeon] |