--- In [email protected], "authfriend" <authfriend@...> wrote: > > Interesting, yes, but I think it misses the point. The > first comment on that post does a good job explaining > the real point, but Feser's response to it completely > misses it again!
Well at first I thought "no, it's commenter Ingx24 that has mised the point". Then "hang on, maybe not". That's because there do seem to be two closely related issues: * The existence of "mental" stuff (the itch sensation experienced by Judy) - "qualia" * The existence of things that can *have* qualia (Judy) Whether this is a good distinction, I don't know. But I think Feser is primarily focused on the first issue in his blog post, whereas "Ingx24" is interested in the second. Having said that, I wonder if Ingx24 just set Feser going by putting it in these terms: "Why should physical processing give rise to a rich inner life at all? It seems objectively unreasonable that it should, and yet it does." That seems to be about the first issue. And in putting it like this he/she wears her Cartesianism on her sleeve. She seems to be saying that we *know* that the self, the person, consciousness *is* "physical processing", thereby signing up 100% to the materialist side of the Cartesian dualism. Feser (I assume) would not grant that assumption. > To put it another way, the question isn't why things-- > including mental experience--seem to us the way they do, > but *why should there be such a thing as "seeming"* in > the first place? Feser or no Feser, that particular itch just won't go away. I think Feser's route would involve navigating through a very tangled thicket of Aristotelean ideas of 'matter', 'form' and 'substance'. Oh, Lordie! http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle-metaphysics/ > So much philosophical discussion of consciousness takes > "seeming" for granted, when it's the very thing that > requires explanation. Indeed. > --- In [email protected], "PaliGap" <compost1uk@> wrote: > > > > This is an interesting blog post IMO: > > http://edwardfeser.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/nagel-and-his- critics-part-viii.html > > > > Or http://goo.gl/QulfS > > > > How much of our existential anguish can be laid at the feet > > of Monsieur R. Descartes? > > > > "From the concrete material objects of everyday life, Descartes > > and the moderns who have followed him derived two abstractions > > (as I discussed in an earlier post). First, they abstracted out > > those features that could be captured in exclusively quantitative > > terms, reified this abstraction, and called that reified abstraction > > "matter," or "the physical," or that which is "objective." Second, > > they abstracted those qualitative features that would not fit the > > first, quantitative picture, reified that abstraction, and called > > it "the mental," or that which is "subjective." Once this move > > was made, there was never in principle going to be a way to get > > mind and matter together again, since they were in effect defined > > by contrast with one another." > > >
