Re: Conscious of the hard problem

Timothy Bates (tbates@karri.bhs.mq.edu.au)
Fri, 25 Jun 1999 16:07:04 +1000

Ron McClain =
>> If some folks are going to hold that science can't explain
>> the subjective, then maybe there's no point in coming up with elaborate
>> schemes to prove that?

correct: these folks are just plain constitutionally incapable of understanding how phlogiston, ether, light, magnetism & chemistry, and life force all got reduced to heat, nothing, QED, and DNA respectively. They also can't understand how a theory of the mind is possible. I am not sure why, but having tried I accept now that it is impossible to convince them otherwise - they can;t see it just like we can't hear bats. Sad but true. Try not to have too many of them around you.

>>It seems that any scenario to prove the "failure"
>> of science on this, is itself going to be a kind of science or
>> engineering or materials scenario, maybe even involving "ghost energy"
>> of some sort? How can any materialist or realist scenario prove that
>> realism is missing an essential component?
They are unrealists - they don't have to prove anything - they assert it so and that is proof. Just like Angela Dworkin claims that if any woman anywhere, anytime, ever claims that a thing is pornographic, that that is incontrovertible proof that that thing should be banned. best,
tim