Timeline for Can physical aspects of the brain reveal everything about what one's subjective experience is like?
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15 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Aug 22, 2018 at 19:41 | comment | added | windlessq hickory | And taking a closer look--wow! Someone needs to rewrite that Wikipedia article on supervenience! | |
| Aug 22, 2018 at 19:34 | comment | added | windlessq hickory | And just to take one last stab at explaining... This confusion is exactly why the phrase "supervenience without reduction" is so often used in philosophy. Most dualists feel they must concede the mental supervenes on the physical--otherwise how to explain the trend of neuroscience in the direction of a one-to-one mapping between mental phenomena and physical phenomena. But they wish to claim that nonetheless the mental does not reduce to the physical. That's why there is such debate among philosophers over whether there is such thing as supervenience without reduction. | |
| Aug 22, 2018 at 19:29 | comment | added | windlessq hickory | The SEP article on supervenience is better than the Wikipedia article (although also far from perfect). plato.stanford.edu/entries/supervenience | |
| Aug 22, 2018 at 19:27 | comment | added | windlessq hickory | B supervenes on A if and only if no change in B is possible without a change in A. No difference in B without a difference in A. That's what makes supervenience such a useful concept--that it is so weird, and distinct from entailment, explanation, and other relations. Relatedly, the Wikipedia page on supervenience gives the wrong definition from the get-go. It's not that the A facts determine the B facts. Something apart from the A facts might contribute to determining the B facts. But the B facts couldn't be otherwise without the A facts also being otherwise. | |
| Aug 22, 2018 at 19:22 | comment | added | windlessq hickory | Supervenience is different from entailment. Indeed, if I were to claim that the firing of c-receptors entails feeling pain, I would not be a dualist. That's because if A entails B, then B is true whenever A is true. To be a dualist (of the kind under discussion) is to claim that it is possible for c-receptors to fire without there being pain. (Enter zombie question.) | |
| Aug 22, 2018 at 19:19 | comment | added | windlessq hickory | So, to set the stage... I'm a dualist. I believe the mental is something over and above the physical. But I still believe the mental supervenes on the physical. What I mean by that is, even though there is something to the feeling of pain over and above the firing of c-receptors, wherever there is pain, there is the firing of c-receptors. Perhaps there can be pain without the firing of c-receptors. But wherever we have observed pain (in humans, in animals) it happens only where there is firing of c-receptors. That's an example of supervenience. | |
| Aug 22, 2018 at 18:46 | comment | added | windlessq hickory | I think that's a mistake on the Wikipedia page. These are hard topics--it's very understandable to be confused--everything confuses me until I'm with it for a long time. At work but will respond in a few minutes. | |
| Aug 22, 2018 at 18:34 | comment | added | Cort Ammon | (Thus I have to make up for the lack of a Princeton grad course with a string of comments and questions =) ) | |
| Aug 22, 2018 at 18:34 | comment | added | Cort Ammon | @windlessqhickory Maybe this is where I'm confused. In your last comment you say "everyone agrees that mental properties supervene on natural facts." I don't think I agree with that, which suggests to me that I'm interpreting some words slightly differently. When I look at, say, the Wikipedia article on supervenence it states that whether mental properties supervene on physical properties is a hot subject of debate, not something that is agreed upon. This aligns with the meanings I associated with words like mental, physical, and supervene. | |
| Aug 22, 2018 at 17:28 | comment | added | windlessq hickory | That's correct. The zombie question is: Could there be a replica of my body that is materially identical to me but is unconscious, i.e. does not experience the feely side of consciousness? It is more or less agreed that this question is what the materialism-dualism debate comes down to. As I said, everyone agrees that mental properties supervene on natural facts. The question is whether they are metaphysically entailed by natural facts. As a comparison, everyone agrees that moral facts supervene on natural facts. But a minority of philosophers believe they are entailed by natural facts. | |
| Aug 21, 2018 at 18:49 | comment | added | Cort Ammon | @windlessqhickory I may get to learn something here. I always thought of zombies as a purely material thing whose properties give the appearance of conscious thought. | |
| Aug 21, 2018 at 18:42 | comment | added | windlessq hickory | My point is that supervenience isn't what matters here. What matters is whether zombies are possible. | |
| Aug 21, 2018 at 2:46 | comment | added | Cort Ammon | @windlessqhickory Interesting. For the purposes of this answer, I only use a binary approach to supervenience. Either mental states are completely defined by brain states, or they aren't. It would be reasonable to talk the subtleties you mention in a more subtle environment, such as one where the author is not using words like "identical" and "know everything" and pinning the materialist to one particular argument. | |
| Aug 21, 2018 at 2:37 | comment | added | windlessq hickory | This is a sort of okay explanation of supervenience, but what it gets wrong is important to the matter at hand. Supervenience comes in different modal strengths. Even the most rabid dualist believes some version of the claim that the mental supervenes on the physical. The materialist's supervenience claim and the dualist's supervenience claim differ in their modal strengths.... so supervenience per se is not what is at issue. See section 3.1 in the SEP article on supervenience, and then reread Frank Jackson etc. Took a Princeton grad course on this lol. | |
| Aug 20, 2018 at 20:09 | history | answered | Cort Ammon | CC BY-SA 4.0 |