As I noted earlier, I’m reading David Chalmers’ “The Conscious Mind”. Early on, Chalmers lays his cards on the table: “In this book I reach conclusions that some people may think of as ‘antiscientific’: I argue that reductive explanation of consciousness is impossible, and I even argue for a form of dualism.” He acknowledges that “Temperamentally, I am strongly inclined toward materialist reductive explanation […] I hoped for a materialist theory; when I gave up on this hope, it was quite reluctantly.”
Like Chalmers, I too am temperamentally inclined towards a materialist account of consciousness. As I read the book (and I’m still finishing chapter 2 on Supervenience and Explanation), I find myself watching closely to see whether or not he smuggles in some dichotomous assumptions which might affect his eventual conclusions. It feels a bit like watching a game of Three-Card Monte to see if and when a card gets creased or a misdirection occurs. There is plenty of exceptionalism flying around. For instance he concedes that “Almost everything is logically supervenient on the physical.[…] Conscious experience is almost unique in its failure to supervene logically.” It’ll be interesting to see how he justifies this.
So far, the only troubling section (p.75) has been the way in which he asserts that “…the facts about the external world do not supervene logically on the facts about our experience.” One would expect him to treat this as a big deal: after all, as he continues, “Idealists, positivists, and others have argued controversially that they do. Note that if these views are accepted the skeptical problem [due to Hume] falls away.” And so, I think, does Chalmers’ case that there is a “deep problem” here. But then with one bound our hero is free, Indiana Jones style: “In any case, I am bypassing this sort of skeptical problem by giving myself the physical world for free.” Well, maybe – but note that he explicitly means “the external world”, and the internal/external dichotomy remains. I have a suspicion that this may be at the root of the eventual dualism, but I’ll have to read on and find out.