Will Bouwman wrote: ↑Mon Jul 29, 2024 5:44 pm
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sun Jul 28, 2024 10:34 pmGiven Physicalism, there is actually no "opinion,"...
How would the sensation of having an opinion, the phenomenon, be different given dualism?
Well, if Physicalism were true, "the sensation" might be different, or might be the same. We'd never know. The difference is that, sensation or not, the sensation would not be a signal that anything genuine or causal was taking place. It could be we'd "feel" we were making a decision or choice or holding an opinion, but really, all we were doing is responding to brain chemicals accidentally remixing, or just dancing to the accidental arrangments of our DNA.
But here's an even more interesting question that raises for the Physicalist: if Physicalism were true, how is that we even
have a "sensation" of making a choice or having an opinion, since no such things exist in reality?
What purely-physical mechanism has produced this delusion, through what kind of causal process, and (though we really cannot ask this question) why?
What physical chain has "required" that we must believe something completely contrary to facts, and completely divorced from how reality actually operates -- if Physicalism were true?
Those are not easy questions for a Physicalist to handle, I think. He'd have to say we're simply totally wrong in the "sensation" we're having -- but proposing why, or how that's come about, or why we're more realistic to think the deep truth about what's at work is completely contrary to every such intuition and normal practice we have had for thousands of years...somehow, we've survived without the faintest suspicion that something as fundamental to all reality (as Physicalism is supposed to be) is even true. Believing in choice, identity, mind, opinion and so forth seem to be serving us very, very well...Physicalism looks to be no more than a speculative theoretical conceit, by comparison.
So Physicalism has some serious work to do, if it's going to overcome such questions. Unfortunately, when we finally believe in Physicalism (if we ever do) it will have to be only because our physical pre-causes have lined up for that...not because "we" are "knowing" that Physicalism is "true."
