On Mon, Sep 6, 2010 at 11:01 PM, Brent Meeker <meeke...@dslextreme.com> wrote: > On 9/6/2010 6:45 PM, Rex Allen wrote: >> >> I would say that physicalism is the claim that *all* conscious >> experiences are due to the independent existence of some other more >> fundamental set of entities (particles, fields, wavefunctions, >> strings, whatever) whose nature must be such that their existence and >> properties are (in principle) directly inferable from the details of >> our sensory data and serve some role in generating that sensory data. >> > > But in that case the conscious experiences and the existence of those > particles are *not* independent. Your definition seems incoherent.
The words "are due to" is meant in the sense "are dependent on". The word "independent" was meant in the sense that the more fundamental entities are not affected by conscious experience. As an example of what I mean: Conscious experience is *dependent* on the interactions of quarks and electrons. But quarks, electrons, their interactions are *independent* of conscious experience. The dependency flows one way. Put a different way: According to physicalism conscious experience supervenes on quarks and electrons. Quarks and electrons do not supervene on conscious experience. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
