From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.ecf!utgpu!cs.utexas.edu!sun-barr!olivea!spool.mu.edu!sol.ctr.columbia.edu!bronze!chalmers Mon Mar  9 18:33:29 EST 1992
Article 4102 of comp.ai.philosophy:
Path: newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.ecf!utgpu!cs.utexas.edu!sun-barr!olivea!spool.mu.edu!sol.ctr.columbia.edu!bronze!chalmers
>From: chalmers@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu (David Chalmers)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Quantum theory and consciousness (was Pansychism)
Message-ID: <1992Feb27.232228.16472@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu>
Date: 27 Feb 92 23:22:28 GMT
References: <jbaxter.697880577@adelphi> <1992Feb16.220955.18106@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu> <429@tdatirv.UUCP>
Organization: Indiana University
Lines: 42

In article <429@tdatirv.UUCP> sarima@tdatirv.UUCP (Stanley Friesen) writes:
>In article <1992Feb16.220955.18106@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu> chalmers@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu (David Chalmers) writes:

>|I don't know that dualism has to be ugly.  A correct theory of qualia
>|wil probably show how they are tightly enmeshed with other fundamental
>|properties (you don't get much more fundamental than information
>|processing).  But it's still dualism, as long as it's the case that the
>|existence of qualia forces one to postulate extra facts about the
>|universe, that one wouldn't be forced to postulate on the basis of
>|physics alone (that's more or less a definition of dualism).
>
>No it isn't, its the definition of emergence (at least to me).
>[...]
>Given your definition of dualism, life itself would be an example.
>It, or at least the laws by which it operates, are *not* a necessary
>derivative of physics.  The same is true of much of chemistry.

Once all the physical facts are given, then all the facts about chemistry,
biology, etc, follow by conceptual necessity -- there's just no way the
physical facts could be as they are without the chemical facts being as
they are (note that I say physical *facts*, not just laws; this includes
all kinds of facts about specific configurations at specific times).
So there's no need to be a dualist about life.

On the other hand, it seems a perfectly coherent (counterfactual)
possibility that all the physical facts could be precisely as they are,
but without any qualia at all.  That's the difference between qualia
and biology/chemistry/etc.  Even once all the physical facts about the
universe are fixed, the facts about qualia are still contingent.  So
there are contingent facts over and above the physical facts, and that's
enough to establish a weak form of dualism.

(Of course this argument can be queried, e.g. by questioning the
coherence of a qualia-less universe, or by questioning the very existence
of qualia, but you have to at least notice the prima facie distinction
between what's going on here and common-or-garden high-level properties
of physical organization.)

-- 
Dave Chalmers                            (dave@cogsci.indiana.edu)      
Center for Research on Concepts and Cognition, Indiana University.
"It is not the least charm of a theory that it is refutable."


