Wednesday, May 19, 2010

William Lycan's reconsideration of dualism

A redated post.

William Lycan considers the case against dualism, and concludes that it is largely overrated.

3 comments:

Jime said...

Lycan's reconsideration is very important, because he's a well known materialist philosopher of mind.

The evidence of science (specially of neuroscience) is neutral regarding materialism and dualism. In that sense, I recommend you the article "Does consciousness depends on the brain?" by Chris Carter:

http://www.parapsychologyandtheskeptics.com/Does-consciousness.pdf

Materialism also has serious problems from a physical science point of view. Quantum mechanics doesn't support materialism:

http://xoomer.alice.it/fedeescienza/brainandmind.html

Philosoher and psychologist Titus Rivas has good papers on dualism:

http://www.geocities.com/athanasiafoundation/artdualist.html

For a convincing empirical and scientific refutation of materialism, the best book I've read is The Irreducible Mind (by Edward Kelly and Brucen Greyson)

Blue Devil Knight said...

Note Lycan isn't considering becoming a dualist, he just thinks the case against it isn't as air-tight as people often think.

Blue Devil Knight said...

I like Chris Carter's writing. I was expecting another numbskull but frankly that's pretty good stuff, especially I like this article. He at least points toward more specifics for the dualist, rather than waste time just trying to refute naturalism, he tries to at least hint toward details of a positive dualistic theory. This is something that is sorely lacking in most dualist philosophy, which is 4/5 refutation, 1/5 speculation on what might a good positive story look like. They need to reverse that if they want to make progress.