Galen Strawson (Texas) comments. Is he right?
(Thanks to Arthur Smith for the pointer.)
I only just learned of Barry’s passing, and I’m enormously saddened at the news. I wrote my PhD on his…
6 responses to “The myth of a “resurgence” in the problem of consciousness”
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The quantitative data show a very substantial decrease in interest in the mind-body problem, from a peak in the 20th century to a much lower level today.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0010027714002315 -
Spot on, nicely done. Crick/Chalmers/Dennett did increase interest in topic among cognitive scientists/neuroscientists, even if the basic issues are not new as Strawson shows. The result has been a lot more imaging research on correlates of consciousness, which is interesting but doesn't solve the problem, and hardening of the eliminativist vs. don't known/maybe can't know positions. I liked Strawson's reminder that lack of knowledge about how physics works is as much a barrier as ambiguities about "consciousness".
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One person that Strawson didn't mention is Chomsky, who has written on this issue a great deal; his emphasis has been on the dissolution of a coherent concept of "body" during the eighteenth century. He argues that that is what has led to our present position in which we cannot even formulate the "mind-body" problem because we don't know just what the "body" is supposed to be. I think this is a reason why Strawson prefers to refer to the problem as the "matter-consciousness" problem.
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McGinn thinks Strawson's right: http://www.colinmcginn.net/galen-strawson-consciousness-myth/#.VQ8g8xDF9fw
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In answer to Bryce, I say quite a lot about Chomsky’s awareness of these issues in Real_Materialism which appeared in 2003 in a (long-delayed) Festschrift for Chomsky. There was a strict limit on the Times Literary Supplement piece, but I also mention Chomsky in the slightly expanded (and fully annotated) version here
BL COMMENT: The links didn't come through, here they are:
https://www.academia.edu/397808/Real_Materialism_2003https://www.academia.edu/11234039/The_consciousness_myth_2015
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Hi Galen, I appreciate the links. I knew of the "Real Materialism" essay but not of the extended TLS piece. Thanks!
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