Wednesday, May 30, 2012
A weakness of eliminative materialism
I was telling my kids about eliminative materialism, the view that there are only material objects, and that there are no minds, persons, beliefs, perceptions, etc. My kids are used to hearing about nutty philosophical views, such as those of Zeno, but they noticed that the standard tool in defending wacky philosophical views is unavailable here. For while Zeno can say that motion is an illusion, eliminative materialists can't say that thought is an illusion. For illusions are among the things the eliminative materialist eliminates. I hadn't noticed this.
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I think Searle uses a similar critique. He talks about how one can reduce secondary qualities by making the appearance/reality distinction. But when it comes to appearance (illusion), one cannot make that distinction, since it is appearance itself one wants to reduce.
I sure had fun with Zeno an his paradoxes about motion being an illusion after this Memorial Day weekend. Take for examplethe race between Achilles and the Tortoise that had been given a head start. The faster Achilles according to Zeno can never catch the Tortoise, because he is always faced with the task of crossing the distance between his starting point and the Tortoise's ever shifting starting point. So I decided to see if there was any truth in Zeno's conclusions with an experiment using a couple hundred miles of interstate. I was driving from Detroit (family out there) back to the Washington D.C. Area trying to catch up with a line of Thunderstorms that had moved through Detroit and had a good head start. Chased that line down the Ohio Turnpike and into PA, wondering if Zeno was right after all. I was going through where it had rained not too long ago, but no closer to the thunderstorm line, thinking of Achilles and the Tortoise all the time. My goal on the PA Turnpike was to catch that line of storms and pass it before the Breezewood Exit hopefully without getting a ticket. I just couldn't seem to do it. Seemed to me all along that Zeno was right. Then at mile marker 90, I caught up with the line. I did pass the line by Breezewood, got off the turnpike to go south to DC on 70. Victory! I had just proven that Achilles could more than catch the Tortoise. The Tortoise can be passed! Zeno is wrong! That's when Zeno got his revenge. The line of storms got to I-70, and I drove lengthwise down the middle of a whole line of severe storms for some 80 miles, all my favorite songs on the country station constantly being interupted by those ominious emergency weather messages. For once having fun a long drive wasn't an illusion.
Is this another instance of the Hard Problem of consciousness presenting itself?
It seems so...
I don't think so, but I could be wrong.
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