[Serious Phil] Irreducibility vs Basicality

[Peter D]

--- In Phil-Sci-Mind at yahoogroups.com, "SWM" <Philscimind at ...> wrote:
>
> --- In Phil-Sci-Mind at yahoogroups.com, "Peter D" <Philscimind@> wrote:
>  
> > --- In Phil-Sci-Mind at yahoogroups.com, "SWM" <Philscimind@> wrote:
> > >
> > > --- In Phil-Sci-Mind at yahoogroups.com, "truthhunter55" <Philscimind@> wrote:
> > > >
> > > > 
> > > > > It doesn't have to be both but only one since the issue rides on whether we are positing two or more ontological basics to explain everything in the universe -- even if one such basic is an irreducible property rather than being reducible to one of two other things. 
> > > > >  
> > > > 
> > > > Causal reduction does not imply ontological basicness. 
> > > >
> > > 
> > > I didn't claim it does.
> > 
> > Yes you did:
> > 
> > TH: "To put it as simply as possible: How does fact that brains cause consciousness imply that consciousness is reducible to the brain?"
> > 
> > SWM:
> > " Remove the brain and there is no consciousness. Cause it to stop functioning and there is no consciousness. "
> > 
> 
> 
> Too busy this evening to deal with your longer post. Maybe later or tomorrow. However this one is easy because it is, thank goodness, brief.
> 
> My answer above (to which you refer) was to a different question, i.e.,

It wasn't formatted that way.

> a question about how the role that brains appear to play empirically, vis a vis consciousness, implies the reducibility of consciousness to brains (or, better, to what brains do). It was NOT to a question of how THAT implies ontological basicness.


That explantory reducibility implies ontological basicness is not in doubt. That a correlative, ie apparently causal, relationship
between brain and mind implies explanatory reducibility, is on
the hand, highly contentious.

> Whether reducibility to what brains do implies a further reduction to an "ontological basic" is a different question. After all, one can argue, like our mysterian friends, that brains do something that brings consciousness, qua certain irreducible properties, into existence because of the further claim that what is brought into existence is an ontological stand-alone, i.e., it isn't reducible to whatever the brain is doing!
> 
> That isn't my position, of course, but it's clearly a different question than "How does [the] fact that brains cause consciousness imply that consciousness is reducible to the brain?" which WAS the question I was answering!
> 
> In fact, I draw MY conclusion that consciousness IS reducible to the same ontological basic(s) that brains are reducible to via an argument that nothing more than a description of brain operations is needed to account for everything we know about consciousness. 

Mere descriptions are never explanations.

>That is, I take a further step and do not rest the argument for reducibility to physical events per se on the claim that brains are always involved in instances of consciousness occurring.
> 
> That is, I don't make a claim that the fact that brains are necessary FOR consciousness to happen is enough to conclude that nothing else is involved since it is at least logically possible that consciousness emerges into the universe through the medium of brain activity rather than being, as I would say of it, merely an aspect of that activity.
> 
> So no, I don't claim what you claim I claimed -- and it's entirely appropriate for me to correct THAT misapprehension on your part and on the part of anyone else who is following along (if anyone is). 
> 
> SWM   
> 
> 
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