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Single Idea 5342

[filed under theme 17. Mind and Body / E. Mind as Physical / 3. Eliminativism ]

Full Idea

One may be committed to the truth of physicalism without being committed to the claim that the essence of an experience is captured fully by a description of its neural realiser.

Gist of Idea

Physicalism doesn't deny that the essence of an experience is more than its neural realiser

Source

Owen Flanagan (The Problem of the Soul [2002], p. 90)

Book Ref

Flanagan,Owen: 'The Problem of the Soul' [Basic Books 2003], p.90


A Reaction

This is a reply to the Leibniz Mill question (idea 2109) about what is missing from a materialist view. Flanagan's point is that just as the essence of a panorama is the view from the hill, so the essence of consciousness requires you to be that brain.

Related Idea

Idea 2109 Increase a conscious machine to the size of a mill - you still won't see perceptions in it [Leibniz]


The 19 ideas with the same theme [there is no such thing as mind, only the brain]:

Dicaearchus said soul does not exist, but is just a configuration of the body [Dicaearchus, by Fortenbaugh]
'Consciousness' is a nonentity, a mere echo of the disappearing 'soul' [James]
Quine expresses the instrumental version of eliminativism [Quine, by Rey]
If we are going to eliminate folk psychology, we must also eliminate folk logic [Putnam]
All mental facts are representation, which consists of informational functions [Dretske]
Elimination can either be by translation or by causal explanation [Kim]
It is arbitrary to say which moment of brain processing is conscious [Dennett]
Visual experience is composed of neural activity, which we find pleasing [Dennett]
Folk psychology may not be reducible, but that doesn't make it false [Kirk,R on Churchland,PM]
Eliminative materialism says folk psychology will be replaced, not reduced [Churchland,PM]
Maybe there is a minimum brain speed for supporting a mind [Dennett]
I don't deny consciousness; it just isn't what people think it is [Dennett]
All meaningful psychological statements can be translated into physics [Kirk,R]
Identity theory likes the identity of lightning and electrical discharges [Lockwood]
If you explain water as H2O, you have reduced water, but not eliminated it [Rey]
Human behaviour can show law-like regularity, which eliminativism can't explain [Rey]
Physicalism doesn't deny that the essence of an experience is more than its neural realiser [Flanagan]
It seems contradictory to be asked to believe that we can be eliminativist about beliefs [Heil]
Eliminativism is incoherent if it eliminates reason and truth as well as propositional attitudes [Lowe]