I’ll try and sum up yesterdays insane rant on the counter-materialism arguments from philosophy of mind a bit more neatly and readably.
There are other things wrong with the individual arguments, and I’ve pointed out a few of the fallacies in that post, but the main thread linking them all, is the technique of using a though experiment to prove a point on the mind. This, of course, is in a long philosophical tradition, and presumes that introspection is the best way to investigate the mind. Not so.
The arguments all run thusly: “Assume the mind is only X. Now imagine Y. See how in your imagination, the mind cannot be X? Case closed.” I believe all the arguments follow this scheme.
Imagine you know all about colour, now imagine seeing it for the first time, see how you didn’t imagine having that experience? Imagine knowing all about bats. See how that doesn’t make you imagine feeling like one?
Imagine working through an algorithm creating behaviour that seems to indicate understanding. See how you don’t imagine understanding what you’re doing?
Imagine the mind is physics. Now imagine the universe as it is, but without mind. See how that’s possible, showing that the mind is more than physical?
And on and on. These arguments can indeed show us the structure of our intuitions about the mind, which indeed is dualistic. But this intuition is but a small part of our actual minds, and not close to the most interesting. Moreover, to generalise the arguments to apply to all of the mind implies the assumption that our intiuitions about our own minds are always correct. Not only is there no logical reason to assume that, neuropsychology tells us that it is actually false. We are wrong about our minds all the time. Independent of their other shortcomings, none of the logical arguments against materialism works for this reason alone.