Philosophy, et cetera 2008-05-04

Ontological Reduction

Is consciousness ontologically irreducible? Richard Brown thinks that the question is incoherent:What [the identity theorist] says is that there is only ONE thing there, the brain and its various states, and you cannot reduce something to itself!He goes on to contrast this with linguistic, theoretical reductions, and explains how those are irrelevant to the debate between physicalists and dualists. I agree with that part. But I think he's wrong to think that linguistic reductions are the only coherent form of reduction.We can see this because, as I've been saying all along, the question is whether qualia are reducible in the same sense that tables and chairs are, whatever that may be. Now, it's an open question whether our talk of tables and chairs could be replaced by (perhaps complicated and long-winded) talk purely in the language of microphysical theory. But ...

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