Aug 24, 2025 09:51 PM
(This post was last modified: Aug 24, 2025 10:05 PM by C C.)
CLOSER TO TRUTH
https://youtu.be/5QzFTcrwHW8
VIDEO EXCERPTS: I find the current state of the field profoundly depressing. I've recently read through your paper [Kuhn's], The Landscape of Consciousness(PDF), in which you distinguish around 200 different positions, and you tell me there are more. It's just mayhem out there. It's the wild west.
[...] I would be ruthless if I were the king of the world. I would like to rule out a lot of theories. I would rule out all dualistic theories, for example. Because I hold the view that there has never been any good argument for dualism.
I would rule out any reference to epiphenomenalism. That's the view that consciousness [its manifestations] are somehow produced by the brain, and sort of floats there, but isn't causally effective, and doesn't feed back into the causal process [it's conjured by the brain, but does not reciprocally affect the brain]. That view is actually refuted by the very fact that it exists. [How can the brain/body know about phenomenal experiences if they have no return effect on the former?]
[...] this may not be so such happy news to some of your viewers, but I think that a great many of the positions are just motivated by the desire to survive after bodily death. I don't think that this is a good motive for any view. So that's something else I would like us to put aside.
[...] I'd like to say, in defense of that, that it's a well-known fact that some of the Christian fathers were materialists. They didn't believe in any sort of immaterial soul. In fact, there are books in the written in the 16th-century which say this is a heretical view. So if you're a believer in one of the Abrahamic religions like Christianity, Judaism or Islam, you are not obliged to believe in an immaterial soul. The latter is simply a mistake.
KUHN: I think there's a very strong justification for that. There are some philosophers today who would point to a resurrection, but not to an immortal soul. I mean, that's part of their belief system. And so they are materialists. [Nancey Murphy, for instance.]
STRAWSON: [...] As I understand it, the view originally was that you die, and the next thing you know it's the resurrection. There is no mental existence between that time and the other. So for us, you need a body.
[...] Another of my long-term beefs is that when materialism was introduced, its central claim -- its key claim -- was precisely that consciousness is wholly material. That consciousness is the real thing. ... That was shocking to people with religious beliefs, because the [later ones] wanted an immaterial soul.
[...] As I'm saying today, consciousness in all its glory is material. So I'm fighting to get this older meaning of materialism back on the table [instead of the current definition that denies consciousness]...
[...] In fact, physicalism is even more strongly marked as a theory that denies consciousness. But Grover Maxwell said: "In being a physicalist, I do not in any way deny the reality of sensations, raw fields, qualia."
So, there too, the word has just been co-opted and corrupted. [...] I have to quote Sir Francis Bacon: "Words do violence to the understanding. They take us over in ways that we're really unaware of, and we fix on meanings and get used to them, and it closes our minds."
So I would say that the real [original] physicalism and materialism had nothing to do with denying consciousness. It just says everything is physical...
Are there too many theories of consciousness? (Galen Strawson) ... https://youtu.be/5QzFTcrwHW8
https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/5QzFTcrwHW8
https://youtu.be/5QzFTcrwHW8
VIDEO EXCERPTS: I find the current state of the field profoundly depressing. I've recently read through your paper [Kuhn's], The Landscape of Consciousness(PDF), in which you distinguish around 200 different positions, and you tell me there are more. It's just mayhem out there. It's the wild west.
[...] I would be ruthless if I were the king of the world. I would like to rule out a lot of theories. I would rule out all dualistic theories, for example. Because I hold the view that there has never been any good argument for dualism.
I would rule out any reference to epiphenomenalism. That's the view that consciousness [its manifestations] are somehow produced by the brain, and sort of floats there, but isn't causally effective, and doesn't feed back into the causal process [it's conjured by the brain, but does not reciprocally affect the brain]. That view is actually refuted by the very fact that it exists. [How can the brain/body know about phenomenal experiences if they have no return effect on the former?]
[...] this may not be so such happy news to some of your viewers, but I think that a great many of the positions are just motivated by the desire to survive after bodily death. I don't think that this is a good motive for any view. So that's something else I would like us to put aside.
[...] I'd like to say, in defense of that, that it's a well-known fact that some of the Christian fathers were materialists. They didn't believe in any sort of immaterial soul. In fact, there are books in the written in the 16th-century which say this is a heretical view. So if you're a believer in one of the Abrahamic religions like Christianity, Judaism or Islam, you are not obliged to believe in an immaterial soul. The latter is simply a mistake.
KUHN: I think there's a very strong justification for that. There are some philosophers today who would point to a resurrection, but not to an immortal soul. I mean, that's part of their belief system. And so they are materialists. [Nancey Murphy, for instance.]
STRAWSON: [...] As I understand it, the view originally was that you die, and the next thing you know it's the resurrection. There is no mental existence between that time and the other. So for us, you need a body.
[...] Another of my long-term beefs is that when materialism was introduced, its central claim -- its key claim -- was precisely that consciousness is wholly material. That consciousness is the real thing. ... That was shocking to people with religious beliefs, because the [later ones] wanted an immaterial soul.
[...] As I'm saying today, consciousness in all its glory is material. So I'm fighting to get this older meaning of materialism back on the table [instead of the current definition that denies consciousness]...
[...] In fact, physicalism is even more strongly marked as a theory that denies consciousness. But Grover Maxwell said: "In being a physicalist, I do not in any way deny the reality of sensations, raw fields, qualia."
So, there too, the word has just been co-opted and corrupted. [...] I have to quote Sir Francis Bacon: "Words do violence to the understanding. They take us over in ways that we're really unaware of, and we fix on meanings and get used to them, and it closes our minds."
So I would say that the real [original] physicalism and materialism had nothing to do with denying consciousness. It just says everything is physical...
Are there too many theories of consciousness? (Galen Strawson) ... https://youtu.be/5QzFTcrwHW8
