Scott_Scheule
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It's easy enough to see where Eliezer is going with this, but the foundation being laid isn't terribly strong.
The dualist case is built for the possibility that--in this particular instance--scientific reductionism will fail. So to argue that reduction often works in other fields or changes the way we look at the world, etc. is perfectly valid, but totally redundant. Chalmers, for example, admits that right off the bat, with gusto. Not only does he accept that some things can be reductively explained, he argues that nearly everything--effectively everything but consciousness--can be reductively explained. The argument is that consciousness is different, not that experimental discoveries can't have counterintuitive results.
So... (read more)
Neat.
In other news, Nobel Prize Winner Daniel Kahneman has published the result of some recent experiments in behavioral economics, which suggest--quite surprisingly!--the most effective means to overcome one's innate biases is by identifying those you disagree with and subjecting them to unrelenting ridicule. The neutralizing effects of this technique were found to be most successful when performed in groups consisting entirely of like-minded individuals (though occasional insertion of one naysayer to prove the foil might have helpful effects). Of the several tested modes of ridicule, the most effective were shown to be: 1. asserting one's opponents are just too dumb to understand an argument; 2. insisting hard questions faced by one's own position are the result of defects in opponents' cognitive machinery and not really questions at all (Kahneman admits this may be a subset of method 1); and 3. finding the silliest members of the opposition and training most of one's rhetorical firepower there. Also, try suggesting the Virgin Mary was a slut.
The heat analogy to consciousness is nothing new.
Chalmers explains and responds here.
Mtraven,
I was addressing the entire thread, not you specifically.
Mtraven,
This is vintage Platonic idealism, no? Not to criticize, just to clarify.
Vassar,
Does Richard have some pull with Chalmers I don't know about?
Incidentally, Richard is presenting here--well--much of Chalmers' arguments in The Conscious Mind. A good book.
anon,
Quite right. I figured Robin was talking about anti-reductionists generally, but I suppose he could have been referring to Keats and friends. To be clear, in my commentary I was referring to the former, and I presumed Robin was as well.
Tom,
Robin's fear was that they're not reading OB.
I'm bothered by the tactic of explaining a groups' qualms by postulating they don't really understand the material. It's just a shade shy of "Anti-reductionists are dumb."
Doug,
It seems to me the introspective evidence is greater for choices spurred on by our desires, than our desires themselves. That is to say, I can't choose which ice cream flavors I like either--but I can choose when I eat ice cream.
Of course, that could be reducible to atoms--at least it's conceivable--the behavioral aspects at least, if not the qualia.
Perhaps the most embarrassing part about all of this--and there is much embarrassing in silly insults aimed at one's opposition being thrown around at a blog named "Overcoming Bias"--is that epiphenomenalists know the arguments, know quite well the apparent absurdity of the position, and have responses, and none of these seem to show up in all this discussion. For example, here. Alas, rather what we have here seems to be a gleeful variant of Ludditism: "Look at those fancy philosophers with their logic and their rationality and their big words! What a bunch of assholes!" Presuming one's opposition is stupid does not strike me as a reliable or respectable means... (read more)