Dan Hutto
I had encountered Dan on the web before, but without having to pause.
He obviously warrants some consideration here. Now I am better focused
on Donald Davidson's crucial role in the defense of physicalism.
Previously I was too much in the thrall of David
Chalmers' approach to the mind-body problem to fully appreciate Davidson's
'anomalous monism'
['Mental Events' (1970)], although that phrase was familiar to me from
my second stint in graduate school.
Dan Hutto's essay, Davidson's
Identity Crisis (c.1999), is a standardly dense philosophical piece.
He criticizes Davidson's attempt to defend a non-reductive physicalism and
then recommends idealism in its stead. To my present knowledge this
essay defines the state of the art of current critical (non-speculative)
idealism, and as such is a useful yardstick. To follow up on Dan, I
recommend you go to his book forum.
Along these lines you should also consider Mark Rowland's Two
Dogmas of Consciousness. This piece provides a further example of
the convolutions surrounding physicalism. The tracking down of
physicalism seems rather like the hunting of the Jabberwocky, or perhaps of
the Snipe. At present there appears to be no outstanding defender of
physicalism or materialism. Dennett and Dawkins are the best known
popularizers of materialism, but neither of them figure in the current
academic debates.
While following up these leads I came across Hugh
Mellor and Tim
Crane who jointly authored 'There is No Question of Physicalism' in
1990.
- "We examine the various definitions and defences of physicalism
that have been offered in recent philosophy of mind, and argue that no
nontrivial version of physicalism is true. Physicalists need to define the
physical in a way that (a) excludes the mental and (b) shows why physical
sciences have an ontological authority that psychology and other
non-physical sciences lack. Physicalists have used the following notions
in attempting thus to define and defend physicalism: reducibility to
physics, causation, laws and supervenience. We show why all these attempts
fail."
This article was reputed to be the definitive refutation of
physicalism. I have not yet been able to locate the article nor any
extended discussion of it on-line.
Then I notice a new book by David
Papineau, "Thinking
about Consciousness" (OUP 2002). (Note that a complete draft
of this book is presently available.)
"The relation between subjective consciousness and the physical
brain is widely regarded as the last mystery facing science. David Papineau
argues that there is no real puzzle here. Consciousness seems mysterious,
not because of any hidden essence, but only because we think about it in a
special way. Papineau exposes the confusion, and dispels the mystery: we see
consciousness in its place in the material world, and we are on the way to a
proper understanding of the mind."
The beat goes on. The two sides pay attention to each other only when
they are locked in the same room, which happens infrequently.
[9/11]
I continue to focus on the four books and the discussions of them that can
be found on the SWIF
page. This is the best single source for the current mind-body debate
that I have come across so far. I hope to provide a summary here
soon.