Reduction and Elimination in Philosophy and the Sciences

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Neutral Monism. A Miraculous, Incoherent, and Mislabeled Doctrine? — Leopold Stubenberg And while many passages in Russell’s texts may suggest the view that his so-called NM is merely idealism or panpsychism in a new guise, I have tried to show that this impression is misleading. While acknowledging certain parallels between NM and idealism, Russell is careful to establish the neutrality of the basic elements of his metaphysics. Literature Chalmers, David 1996 The Conscious Mind. In Search of a Fundamental Theory, New York: Oxford University Press. Feigl, Herbert 1958 “The Mental and the Physical”, Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, Volume II, 370-498. Lenin, V.I., 1909 Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1959. Nagel, Thomas 2002 “The Psychophysical Nexus”, in: Nagel, Thomas Concealment and Exposure, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 194-235. Popper, Karl R. & Eccles, John (eds.) 1977 The Self and Its Brain, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Russell, Bertrand 1921 The Analysis of Mind, New York: Humanities Press 1978. Russell, Bertrand 1924 “Logical Atomism” in: Russell, Bertrand 1956 Logic and Knowledge. Essays 1901-1955, Edited by Robert C. Marsh, London: Allen & Unwin, 321-343. Russell, Bertrand 1927a The Analysis of Matter, New York: Dover 1954. Russell, Bertrand 1927b An Outline of Philosophy, London: Allen and Unwin 1979. Russell, Bertrand 1948 Human Knowledge. It’s Scope and Limits, New York: Simon and Schuster 1976. Russell, Bertrand 1959 My Philosophical Development, London: Unwin Books 1975 Strawson, Galen 2006 “Realistic Monism” in Strawson, Galen 2006 Consciousness and its Place in Nature, Exeter: Imprint Academic, 3-31. 339
A somewhat Eliminativist Proposal about Phenomenal Consciousness Pär Sundström, Umeå, Sweden 1. Introduction Let eliminativism about an object, x, or property, X, be the claim that x doesn't exist or X is not instantiated. Atheists are in this sense eliminativists about all gods, Christians are eliminativists about Zeus. More universally, we tend these days to be eliminativists about impetus, caloric and phlogiston. One may wonder how global the threat of elimination is. Among the objects and properties that we take to exist or be instantiated today, which ones may be up for "elimination" tomorrow? This paper focuses on the case of phenomenal consciousness, or "what it is like" to be in certain mental states. It is often claimed that consciousness is secure against elimination. Flanagan, for example, urges that consciousness differs importantly from objects and properties that have been "eliminated" in the past. Phlogiston was hypothesised to exist because it could explain phenomena that are more immediately present to us, like burning and rusting. But consciousness is not, or not only, assumed to exist because it explains other, more immediately observable phenomena. Consciousness is also, and perhaps primarily, assumed to exist because it is itself immediately present to us. As Flanagan puts it: "consciousness as a phenomenon to be explained has a secure place at the observational periphery" (1992, 33; cf. also Chalmers 1996, 102). It's easy to feel the force of Flanagan's suggestion. However, I shall try to cast some doubt on it in what follows. Section 2 makes some preliminary remarks about "eliminativist" and "revisionist" outcomes of theoretical developments. Section 3 develops the somewhat eliminativist proposal about phenomenal consciousness. Section 4 elaborates on the eliminativist character of the proposal. Section 5 comments on the relation between the proposal and "monitor theories" of consciousness. 2. Eliminativist and revisionist conclusions Every now and then, we realise that things are not quite the way we once thought they were. Nothing is quite the way Newtonians thought that mass were. The element centrally involved in burning and rusting is not the way phlogiston was taken to be. The heat of a body is not what caloric theorists thought it was. Royalties don't exercise power with a divine mandate, and solidity is not a matter of being dense all over. In some cases where we realise that things aren't the way we thought they were, we end up saying eliminativist things like, "there is no x". In other cases, we end up saying revisionist things like, "x is not quite what we thought it was". What determines whether, in a given case, we end up saying one thing or the other? Presumably the magnitude of our change of view – however exactly that should be measured – plays some role. If our views on a 340 topic change (by some measure) to a significant extent, we are presumably more inclined to draw an eliminativist conclusion than if they revised to a lesser extent. But it's possible that more "pragmatic" factors play a role as well, for example, whether researchers judge that they will make a greater impact by using one or the other kind of formulation (c.f. Churchland 1986, 283-4; and Stich 1996, chapter 1). However that may be, it seems to me that, whether in a given case we end up talking in an eliminativist or a revisionist way is not as such of any interest. What is of interest is our change of view, and I suggest that we can achieve at least an intuitive sense of how significant such a change is that is independent of how we end up speaking. For example, if Lavoisier had convinced us to say things like, "phlogiston exists but it's not what we thought it was", I suggest that we could have achieved the same appreciation of the theoretical change that he contributed to bring about. I shall next develop a proposal concerning consciousness. Whether accepting this proposal would lead us to make eliminativist or revisionist claims, I believe that, if one comes from a certain natural and commonly occupied starting point, it would amount to a significant change of view. 3. A proposal about phenomenal consciousness I shall develop my proposal in three steps. Step 1: Sifting out the "Galilean qualities". Consider a visual experience of a ripe lemon in good lightning condition. Salient in this experience is a certain yellowish quality. It's somewhat tricky to make this quality a joint topic of conversation, because there are so many disagreements about it. For example, while naïve realists take it to be a property of lemons, sense-datum theorists to be a property of sense-data, some qualia theorists may take it to be a property of conscious experiences, and others take it to not be instantiated at all. There is also disagreement about how we talk, should talk, and can talk about this quality. Some find it natural to use the term "yellow" to talk about it, but others think that we don't have a public language term for it, and even that we can't introduce such a term (Thau 2002, section 5.13). But despite these obstacles, I think we can make this kind of quality a joint topic of conversation. Whatever instantiates it, and whatever it can and should be called, it is the kind of quality that is most salient in our colour experiences. I will suppose that we have a shared understanding of which type of quality this is. I will call these qualities "Galilean", since I take it to be the kind of quality that Galileo was concerned with when he discussed what qualities belong to the world and what qualities belong to the mind. (I shall later distinguish these from alleged qualities of another type.) I use "Galilean quality" broadly, for qualities that are salient in various sense perceptions like sight, smell and taste, and
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31 Alexander Hieke Hannes Leitgeb H
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Reduktion und Elimination in Philos
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Distributors Die Österreichische L
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6 Inhalt / Contents Wittgenstein me
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8 Inhalt / Contents The Evolution o
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Formal Mechanisms for Reduction in
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4. Property language and theoretica
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imperatives, or commands in the for
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Referential Practice and the Lure o
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The Augustinian account confuses mo
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hurried to fix it on the page. The
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The Essence (?) of Color, According
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Literature Austin, James 1980 “Wi
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Wittgenstein’s Externalism - Gett
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Informal Reduction E.P. Brandon, Ca
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An Anti-Reductionist Argument Based
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An Anti-Reductionist Argument Based
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Did I Do It? -Yeah, You Did! Wittge
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Literature Did I Do It? -Yeah, You
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tween the two approaches. The task
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On Two Recent Defenses of The Simpl
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On Two Recent Defenses of The Simpl
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Queen Victoria’s Dying Thoughts T
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Diagonalization. The Liar Paradox,
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Proof: Given a function ƒ from con
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that I am sure that it is true that
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experiencing something as a red pen
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There can be Causal without Ontolog
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There can be Causal without Ontolog
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objects. But they also leave unansw
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The Knower Paradox and the Quantifi
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The Knower Paradox and the Quantifi
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lent. It also implies that an inven
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The Scapegoat Theory of Causality M
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We may have evolved a specialized c
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easoning have their source in the l
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Wittgenstein on Frazer and Explanat
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genstein 1993, p. 143). In order to
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an adequate syntactic analysis of o
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Wittgenstein meets ÖGS: Wovon man
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Wittgenstein meets ÖGS: Wovon man
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3. Der Elementarsatz wird als Relat
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Literatur Glock, Hans Johann 2006
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Explaining the Brain: Ruthless Redu
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Occam’s Razor in the Theory of Th
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Literature Campbell, Donald T. 1987
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Die Nichtreduzierbarkeit der klassi
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Literatur Die Nichtreduzierbarkeit
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Let T I be the minimal theory of tr
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Does Bradley’s Regress Support No
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(3) Mutatis mutandis, realism has t
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Zeitliche Ontologie und zeitliche R
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Betrachtung ontologischer Fragen, M
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The decisive consequences of this a
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Benacerraf and Bad Company (An Atta
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offer a solution to the bad company
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Literature Benacerraf, Paul 1965
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"PA" by using "PA* ", at least at t
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Hard Naturalism and its Puzzles Ren
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The Mind-Body-Problem and Score-Kee
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mental properties, for instance, or
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kommt es zu einem gravierenden Miss
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Reduction Revisited: The Ontologica
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4. Conclusion Reduction Revisited:
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All in all, we have seen that reduc
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Physicalism Without the A Priori Pa
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Literature Cartwright, Nancy 1999:
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Wittgensteins Projektionsmethode al
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Schlussbemerkungen Wittgensteins Pr
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intentional states requires functio
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Relating Theories. Models and Struc
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Literature Relating Theories. Model
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e invoked in response to the questi
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Do Brains Think? Christopher Humphr
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4. Conclusion So do brains think or
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How Metaphors Alter the World-Pictu
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The Modal Supervenience of the Conc
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Literature van der Auwera, Johan an
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3. The Determination of Form by Syn
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Zwischen Humes Gesetz und „Sollen
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Zwischen Humes Gesetz und „Sollen
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Assessing Humean Supervenience Amir
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determination thesis; it fails as a
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Aus der obigen Definition folgt, da
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Ding-Ontology of Aristotle vs. Sach
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Ding-Ontology of Aristotle vs. Sach
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How do Moral Principles Figure in M
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“Downward Causation”: Emergent,
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“Downward Causation”: Emergent,
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A with distinguished subset Z of te
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A Metaphysically Moderate Version o
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Literature Balashov, Yuri 2002 ''Wh
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“In der Frage liegt ein Fehler”
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Problems with Psychophysical Identi
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identity theory, or as a predecesso
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of the world. It only matters that
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Four Anti-reductionist Dogmas in th
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Four Anti-reductionist Dogmas in th
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notion of time and requires that so
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Some Remarks on Wittgenstein and Ty
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Some Remarks on Wittgenstein and Ty
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concrete particulars can be subject
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phenomenal concept of experiencing
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Metaphorische Bedeutung als virtus
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speaker is then attaching a special
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„Vom Weißdorn und vom Propheten
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„Die Einheit hören“ - Einige
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„Die Einheit hören“ - Einige
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S4) the necessity of arithmetic is
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Getting out from Inside: Why the Cl
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Dispensing with Particulars: Unders
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Literature Dispensing with Particul
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Reichenbach’s Concept of Logical
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Defining Ontological Naturalism Mar
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Literature Jackson, Frank 1986. “
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properties are located. This proces
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‘our conceptual scheme’ “is c
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Properties and Reduction between Me
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Does this mean that metaphysics sho
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do not pick out pain in a system by
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The Writing of Nietzsche and Wittge
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his teachings. He coincides with hi
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sense of a proposition without firs
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Naturalistic Ethics: A Logical Posi
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Literature Kant, Immanuel 2006 Crit
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What we now require is a bridge the
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Species, Variability, and Integrati
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could mention the many sorts of iso
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to work this way. Classic examples
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The Key Problems of KC Matteo Pleba
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have embraced the myth of prose: it
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5. Prior’s Problem As Patrick Bla
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Reductionism in Axiology: the Case
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developing of cancer tissue in huma
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(2) One-way Nagelian bridge princip
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Rethinking the Modal Argument again
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Rethinking the Modal Argument again
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that we are to find the features we
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Atypical Rational Agency Paul Raymo
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Literature Anscombe, G. E. M. 1957
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situation bieten sich keine Kriteri
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Two Reductions of ‘rule’ Dana R
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one that could take place, but does
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physics is not able to make, since
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size, location, temporal characteri
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Transcendental Philosophy and Mind-
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From Topology to Logic. The Neural
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From Topology to Logic. The Neural
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The Calculus of Inductive Construct
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The Four-Color Theorem, Testimony a
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experience. Of course, a detailed a
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Clearly x = y → x = ext y holds,
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Intentional Fundamentalism Petri Yl
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The second dimension to be consider
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The very existence of the special s
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Heil, J. (1999), “Multiple Realiz
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independent of what is the fact, fa
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415
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Publications of the Austrian Ludwig
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