Posted by alexandra_k on July 9, 2005, at 3:32:44
In reply to Re: Mind and Brain or just Brain? » alexandra_k, posted by cockeyed on July 7, 2005, at 12:52:50
ROFL!
Hotel California is one of my favourite songs.
Yeah, Occham's razor.Once upon a time it was thought that there was a radical difference in kind between living (animate) and non-living (inanimate) things. It was thought that living things possessed vital spirit and that left when you died. Only living things possessed vital spirit.
On with the march of science... And now the difference between living and non-living things is explained in terms of biochemical processes.
Did we go 'how nice, we now have two explanations?' No - we did not. It was thought that the postulated vital spirit was basically redundant once we had the outline of a scientific explanation. Positing vital spirit doesn't buy us anything with respect to explanation. Occhams razor is basically the thought that you shouldn't multiply entities beyond necessity. Vital spirit is an extra kind of stuff (hence a more complex theory) and vital spirit doesn't explain things any better than bio-chemical processes and so vital spirit has indeed been axed from our ontology (catalogue of things that exist).
Same with phlogiston.
The thought is that when we don't know very much we tend to think there is a 'thing'. Later on as we learn more we realise that we don't need to posit a 'thing' after all.
It is thought...
It is thought...
That the mind / soul / spirit should go the same way.But: Occham's razor can only be used when we have two theories that are explanatorily equivalent. So. Does Dualism buy us anything that the identity theory cannot?
Though really... There aren't any substance dualists around anyways. The dualists who remain are property dualists (mental states are immaterial properties of the physical brain). It is unclear whether Occham's razor could / should apply to the positing of classes (or kinds) of properties rather than substances.
Did you used to study?
poster:alexandra_k
thread:523626
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/write/20050621/msgs/525353.html